With God’s help (and I really mean that!) I was able to complete the Association pour L’Evangelisation des Enfants (AEE) training….better known to some of you as Child Evengelism Fellowship (CEF). I don’t have the final results back yet, but I’m pretty sure I passed.
I was nervous going into this training, not sure exactly what to expect as far as homework, participation etc… and with my French still lacking, I told myself I’d try my best, but if worse came to worse I could just audit the class. But with the Holy Spirit’s help I made it through. One of my language helpers took the course too. During sessions I’d write down new to me words, then the following French class she’d explain them to me. It also helped, that when I was a kid I attended a CEF Good News club done by my sister and cousin, so I was somewhat familiar with the program already. Thirdly, when I had homework at home, I used handy-dandy google translate to help me make sure I was getting spellings and conjugations right. And lastly, every time I had a presentation to do, I’d practice it, then pray that God would help me remember the words I needed and to think clearly…and ya’ll I really believe it was Him helping me with those presentations.
We had 3 presentations:
- Using the Word-Less Book
2. Teaching a memory verse (this was my favorite one).
3.Teaching a lesson. I practiced on my language helper and on the kids at home (see below).
The AEE training helped me in 2 ways. For one thing, it reminded me of the importance of teaching God’s Word to children, and challenged me to be more faithful at sharing Bible stories with my own kids and kids around me.
The other part of the AEE training that was helpful to me was the language learning side. It was hard, but it pushed me further than I usually push myself. The combination of listening and having to understand what was being said, doing speaking presentations, and having written homework (I had done very little writing in French before this), has really helped give me a boost in my French.
Thank you to all of you who prayed me through this course!