I love how God sets us up sometimes even when we don’t realize He’s doing it. That’s what happened to me yesterday during Children’s Church.

My family has been dealing with a crisis situation for the past seven weeks (see lolliehofer.blogspot.com for the full story) and life has become much busier than normal. This past weekend was especially hectic. By the time I got to church yesterday morning I was totally exhausted from the craziness of the weekend.

It was Mission’s Sunday using a program called Boys and Girls Missionary Challenge and our emphasis was on Fiji. The children give a special offering for the focused country and I always provide a little reward for them…this time boxes of Reese’s Pieces. However, once the children were settled into their seats, fatigue hit me so hard I had a difficult time even standing. The children were surprised when they heard me say, “Hey! Let’s each grab a box of Reese’s Pieces and head outside. I don’t think God will mind one bit if we just sit around eating Reese’s Pieces for a while.” And that’s exactly what we did.

We went out one of the back doors to a stoop of steps. Sitting on the steps, we ate our candy and talked about absolutely nothing of importance for about fifteen minutes. The children loved it. While hanging out on the back stoop, a couple of the neighborhood kids showed up on their bikes. I knew Kyle and Tessa because they come to our Wednesday night neighborhood outreach, “Superbook Academy.” I told my grandson, Micah, to go to the classroom and get boxes of candy for them as well. The church kiddos did a great job of including Kyle and Tessa in our discussion about absolutely nothing of importance.

When it was time to go back in and actually learn something about Fiji, Kyle and Tessa asked if they could join us. Since they both lived close to the church, I told them to run home and ask for parental permission. Within five minutes they were both back and joined us for the rest of Children’s Church learning about missions around the world and particularly in Fiji.

What I loved was that a missionary outreach took place right in our church’s backyard. Even though both of the children attended regularly on Wednesday nights, we were able to open the way for them to attend on Sunday mornings as well. I know they enjoyed themselves and plan on returning.

Don’t you love it when God sets you up like that? We thought it was about playing hooky and eating Reese’s Pieces. God had something even better in mind.