by Richard Sandberg
When Louisa County Public Schools reopened for the 2020-21 school year, they did so with students attending two days per week. Louisa Baptist Church opened a day camp to accommodate families needing childcare on the days their children did not attend in-person classes. The Alma Hunt Offering for Virginia Missions grant made it possible to offer scholarships to families whose budgets could not afford childcare, buy supplies, and pay expenses incurred to conduct the day camp.
One of our greatest hopes was that Louisa Baptist Church’s Day Camp would not only help children learn, help them be fed, stay safe, and feel loved, but that it would be an opportunity for children who don’t go to church anywhere to hear about Jesus. The fact that two thirds of our children don’t regularly go to church anywhere has proven to be both a great opportunity and a challenge.
Three days a week, I have the opportunity to tell the kids a Bible story, pray with them, teach them about how to find things in the Bible and help them memorize scripture. Some kids have taken to it surprisingly quickly. By the end of the first week every kid in camp could say Matthew 19:14 without any help.
One day I encouraged the kids to memorize the order of all of the books of the New Testament with the offer of six prizes from the treasure chest to anyone who could. One boy responded “six prizes if I worked on that all afternoon--I could do that today!”… and he did.
