Red-fringed clouds glowed across the western horizon. Sabbath was coming to a close with yet another one of God’s incredible paintings in the sky. Thirteen grade-school children waited anxiously on the Kotale Church lawn for the promised memory-verse party to begin. Excitement mounted as they heard the roar of an engine and saw our four-wheeler pulling a large trailer down the path toward them. This was truly a historic moment in the lives of these villagers. Never before had they heard of, let alone experienced, a hayride!

Last year, I challenged the children in my Sabbath School class to learn 12 memory verses. A friend translated the chosen texts into Gogodala. Then I typed each one in Gogodala and English so the children could choose which language they wanted to memorize. If they chose English, I asked that their parents explain to them the meaning of the texts if they were not yet of reading age. Each Sabbath, they would come to me and recite the verse they had learned. If they knew it, they would get a sticker on their verse card. When they learned all 12 verses, I had them come to our house and recite them. Those who succeeded were invited to a party.

After several months of equipment problems, we were finally able to reward these children for their hard work. Steve hooked up a flatbed trailer to the four-wheeler he uses to haul timber. The children excitedly piled onto the trailer along with some mothers and our family. Our trip was like a hay ride without the hay. The children laughed and waved to their friends as they bumped through Kotale. After about 20 minutes of bouncing down the rutted road, we came to the area at the far end of the village where one of the children’s mothers had a fire blazing, and I pulled out a bag of marshmallows. The children had never seen marshmallows and didn’t know what to do with them. I demonstrated how to spear a marshmallow with a stick and hold it over the coals close enough to brown but not burn. Soon there were a dozen marshmallows on sticks aimed at the embers. The children learned quickly, and soon the marshmallow bag was empty. They will likely talk about this event for a long time.

The best reward for me was hearing that the teacher in the local village school asked the students to recite a memory verse, and my Sabbath School children were the only ones who could stand up and do it. Already they are asking when they can start learning more texts.

Please pray for our children that they will learn to value hiding God’s word in their hearts.

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