With pandemic 2020 behind us, Lighting the Way began an outreach of evangelism to underprivileged children living in Sarasota, FL, in January of 2021, after my mother, Claudette Litz, had moved to Sarasota. She began it, and I worked with her whenever I was in town. Now that she has moved, and I am still living in Sarasota, I lead it, and I have grown to love them like my own and delight in this ministry of evangelism to these underprivileged kids each week in the Orange Avenue trailer park.
God led us to begin this to Hispanic children living in a rundown trailer park in the poor area of Newtown, which is known for its crime and drugs. Recently, God brought a Christian family from Haiti into the trailer park, and I have taken them and their mother (with their father still in Haiti waiting to get to come to America legally) to my church at Sarasota Baptist. The mother does not speak fluent English, so they attend a Haitian church regularly, but I still pick them up and take them to special events at Sarasota Baptist.
To get this outreach started, we distributed fliers within the trailer park to the families who live there, and the Kids’ Bible Clubbegan in 2021! Starting out, we met with the kids on a tarp spread on an outdoor basketball court within the trailer park, bringingpillows for the children as they sat on the ground on the tarp. We taught them each week what the Bible teaches about how to be saved. As they got taller, I transitioned to bringing chairs each week, and the outreach has become more of a mentorship, with many of the kids teenagers now. The purpose is not just to teach them the Gospel but what it means. They love our apologetics game called “Stump the Teacher,” as they get to ask any hard question about God or the Bible they can think of, as they have now all prayed for Jesus to be their Lord and Savior and are eager to grow.
We were told when we began that many of these kids raised in Newtown end up in crime, so it was no wonder that they knew nothing about the Bible when we began working with them. They are proud of their Scripture memorization each week. We bought NKJ Bibles for all of them, too. There are prizes for doing Bible study throughout the week in his or her own Bible and for memorizing their Bible verses. We also brings snacks and water. We reward them with special outings, like spending fifty dollars per child on a birthday gift and supporting them in person at school events. When they have an extra need, we try our best to meet that, too. They get thrilled from a meal at Wendy’s nearby, so we sometimes reward them with that.
When we began working with these kids they had never looked up a single verse in the Bible and did not know answers to basic questions like “How did Jesus die?” and “Why did Jesus die on the cross?” Most of them were raised in the Catholic church, but they now know so much about the Gospel and Jesus that they are witnessing to their family members and friends who are Catholics about how we are saved through faith in Jesus and no merit of our own. There could be nothing more rewarding to my life than this mentorship, and I look forward to every Saturday, meeting with these kids. Thank you, to everyone who partners with me to see these children reach their potential in life through Jesus.
