A Wonderful Creation!
Treasures of Heaven and Eagle’s NEST Partner
For two afternoons in October longtime afterschool ministry Treasures of Heaven Bible Club and the new non-profit ministry Eagle’s NEST US partnered to educate and inspire the children from Washington Elementary School who attend Treasures on the creation story – God’s creation of the air, water, continents, plants and animals - and ways that they, even as children, can help care for God’s creation.
Leader Barbara Fulmer and the many volunteers of Treasures of Heaven from First Pres and Visalia NAZ have continued to provide a safe, loving environment where 50 to 60 largely underprivileged school children are learning about God’s love on Wednesday afternoons during the school year.
During those two October Wednesday’s, Todd Slinde of Eagle’s NEST prepared and delivered a lesson to the children (1st-6th grades) on God’s creation and His special care for each of those children individually. With a theme from 1 John 4:19, (We love each other because God first loved us) the students also learned about the importance of caring for each other by caring for God’s wonderful creation in eight easy ways. Ways that they could actually practice and have an impact in their own environment.
- Conserve water
- Don’t litter
- Pick up trash
- Recycle
- Use less plastic
- Use cloth shopping bags
- Turn off lights, computers and TV’s
- Help others to learn to do the same
The message came through loud and clear for these students as a week later they could still recall the practical acts of care that they could take. Some things they wrote the following week in their thank you cards to Todd were: “Thank you for teaching me about God and the earth”. “Teaching us how to save water”. “Thank you for teaching me to turn off the lights, pick up trash and recycling”. “I love picking up trash, I love not wasting water”. “Thank you for teaching us about animals and nature”.
But the biggest “thank you” of all should go to the Treasures of Heaven volunteers doing such great work, week after week. And “thank you” to those same volunteers for living out the message in 1 John 4:19 – Treasures of Heaven volunteers certainly love those Washington School kids, because God first loved them.