During the summer of 2023, Concordia Gospel Outreach (CGO) had the opportunity to provide resources to a group of students and teachers from Lutheran High School South in St. Louis for their mission trip to the Dominican Republic. This group took children’s resources to share with the local Lutheran school, church, and seminary and to help put the Gospel into empty hands.
Local Impact
To prepare the students and teachers traveling to the Dominican Republic to share God’s Word with the children they’d interact with, CGO donated a variety of children’s resources, including Spanish Arch® Books, children’s Bibles, and activity books. The resources were handed out to children at the local Lutheran school and church, seminarians at the seminary in Santiago, and a church group that hosts a Sunday School–type program that meets regularly to teach children about what the Bible says.
“These children come from homes where there is not great access to quality Christian reading materials for children, so to be given a book is something they all appreciated,” said Joanna Wescoatt, a Lutheran South teacher and leader on the trip. “There was an older boy who lives next to the seminary where we were staying, who had made friends with our group. He had seen the stacks of Arch Books and showed great interest in them. I asked him whether he would like to take one home to his baby sister, and he immediately nodded his head and went to the one he wanted—the story of creation.”
Opening Doors to Opportunity
If you remember the first time you learned about the story of creation, it was likely at Sunday School or reading a book at home in your parents’ laps. There were likely plenty of resources around for you to read about any Bible story you wanted. While we believers in the United States have ample opportunity to learn about the Bible, many children all over the world—like in the Dominican Republic—do not. This is why it is so important that we share the Gospel with others.
CGO donated these children’s resources to this mission trip so that the mission volunteers could provide the children with stories and fun ways to learn about not just creation but also how much Jesus loves them and cares for them. CGO was able to provide enough resources for each seminarian to get a complete set of the Arch Books and a children’s Bible, so they could return to their own countries to serve the children and families in their communities more equipped and prepared than before.
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