Icuí is a neighbourhood in northern Brazil where people don't have much. Narrow dirt roads lead to small wooden shacks. Money is scarce. Men sell candies at the side of the road in hopes of earning enough to feed their ever-expanding families. Many are illiterate and some mothers struggle with basic math when they try to sell eggs in the market. Thieves steal anything they can get their hands on. While there is so much this community lacks, Icuí doesn't lack children.
My parents are missionaries living near Icuí and we started helping at a small, one-room church there in 2001. I moved back to Canada in 2003, while my parents continued to serve in Icuí. In the years after I left Brazil, I started to learn to use chronological Bible teaching tools, and began to wish I could share the Portuguese version of The Lamb with the children of Icuí. Last summer the Lord gave me the opportunity to do just that.
We decided to teach The Lamb in a five-day Vacation Bible School format. By mid-summer, the Brazilian leader of our church had rounded up a VBS staff made up of children and teens. Our staff meetings consisted of a bit of everything: reading The Lamb, learning songs, playing games and cutting out dozens of foam lambs for crafts. Young people from the church passed out invitations and carried bricks to build a little classroom at the back of our church. We prayed that the Lord would help children understand and believe the Gospel.
About thirty-five children attended our five-morning VBS. Each day we taught two chapters from The Lamb. Review was essential to fill in gaps in the understanding of children who missed a day or two. After the new lesson, staff checked comprehension by meeting with a few children and asking questions from the book. Many of the day's activities and crafts were centred around the message of The Lamb. On the last day of the club, my brother told me that thirteen-year-old Bruna from his small group seemed to have understood and believed the Gospel. She was very clear on all the material we had studied. I don't think Bruna was the only one who learned key truths about the Lord through the teaching of The Lamb.
Although The Lamb was written with children in mind, it has impacted a much broader scope of people. Comments, even from adult staff, evidenced that the connection between the Old Testament sacrificial lambs and Christ, the Lamb of God, had snapped into sharper focus. Five years ago, seventeen-year-old Ingrid was my Sunday school student. Now Icuí is seeing its first home-grown Sunday school teacher in Ingrid.This year she taught the VBS lessons, carefully studying and practicing with the material beforehand. On the last morning of the VBS, Ingrid spoke to me with enthusiasm about the lesson for that day—the tie-together where the children learn that Jesus is the Lamb of God, our Substitute. "I never really understood much about the lamb story in Scripture," she admitted to me. It is thrilling to see the excitement as people begin to plumb the depths of "so great a salvation" (Hebrews 2:3).
Icuí lacks what much of the world values most, but many are being made rich by the saving knowledge of "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world" (John 1:29).
