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Superkids
Superkids in a super place
Saturday morning Bible club introduces street kids to new life
By Called and Sent Staff PHOTO GALLERY
CAINTA, Philippines—It’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday. The regular crowd shuffles in.
Make that, piles in.
With apologies to Billy Joel, this is no piano bar. This is Superkids Bible School, a Saturday morning kids club hosted by New Hope Christian Fellowship in this eastern Metro Manila suburb. The church has run Superkids for seven years as an outreach to the families living in the squatter community around it. And for seven years, the kids have come, hundreds at a time.
They’re kids like Christian Conchas, age 13. Monica Buenviaje, age 6. J.R. Lopez, age 11. Hero Mahonay, age 10. Krysel Tadoy, age 6. Today they’re 200-strong, milling around the concrete floor, talking and playing, before Mona Teodoro takes the stage.
Mona, 46, the wife of New Hope pastor Ding Teodoro, commands the stage like a pop star. She shouts a Tagalog greeting into the microphone, and the kids shout back a response.
Today the kids will sing upbeat worship songs, learn a Bible verse, listen to a Bible story and sing the local version of “Happy Birthday” to one little girl. The enthusiasts crowd up front, the junior anarchists bringing up the rear, running and play-fighting.
Helping change kids, one at a time
One tussle turns ugly. A 10-ish boy and a much larger and angrier girl, maybe 14, get into a fistfight, a common sight on the street but not in here. Friends try to break it up. An adult worker eventually pulls the girl away and leads her backstage. The boy tells his side of the story to friends between sobs.
While the group belts out worship songs, Mona takes Angry Girl backstage. Behind a sign that reads, “Winning the Next Generation for Jesus,” Mona asks her why she was so mad. Angry Girl says it was because her mother scolded her that morning.
The girl returns to the crowd a half-hour later, looking remarkably calm. Mona shakes her head. “It’s just one thing on top of the other,” she says, making a stacking motion with her hands.
Superkids is helping kids deal with some of those things. Whether it’s serving a nutritious lunch (today it’s sinigang, a pork and vegetable dish), handing out backpacks and umbrellas for perfect attendance 10 weeks in a row, teaching them about Jesus or helping Superkids alumni pay for college, New Hope is giving kids like Christine Sismundo just that.
Christine started coming to Superkids six years ago, when she was 11. She asked Christ into her life right away and brought all five of her younger siblings to Superkids, too. Christine convinced her mother to come to New Hope, where she, too, accepted Jesus. Christine, 17, now is a sophomore at the University of the Philippines, studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree and helping out every Saturday at Superkids.
“I don’t ask her. She’s just here,” Mona says, smiling at Christine. “She’s really a lot of help.”
The first Christmas party
Help. That was the thing Ding and Mona knew was needed as they looked around them seven years ago—the kids begging at car windows and getting in trouble on the streets needed help. “Our heart was, what can we do for these children?” Mona says. “Suddenly just an idea came out: Why not throw a Christmas party for the street children?”
The idea was to serve a spaghetti dinner with some bread. Someone donated a lechon (roasted suckling pig, a Filipino delicacy). Other donations rolled in. Ding and Mona hoped for 200 kids to show up. They got 500. Suddenly their church had a whole new mission to the squatters around them.
“We saw that it would be an effective ministry,” Mona says. So after that Christmas party, they started their first 10-week module. They are just finishing their 27th.
Coming back for seconds
With a seven-year track record, the church now has former Superkids serving the current ones. Some dish stew on Saturday mornings; some play in the Sunday worship band at New Hope. Like Christine, they can remember where they were and where they’ve come because of the program.
Ding recalls one young woman they are helping put through school relaying her story. She told him that when she was a girl, she was on the streets. Then she got an invitation from New Hope for a Christmas party, and she started coming to Superkids after that. “Now I am in college,” she told Ding. “Now I have a different life. Look at what God did for me!”
Superkids’ format is simple, but effective: Give the kids a safe, fun place to learn about God and send them home with a full tummy. It’s more than most of them get at home in the squatter settlements, that’s for sure. As Ding works the crowd, tousling hair and mock-wrestling with some of the boys, his smile says he has great hopes for these kids—and that he loves being with them.
“Right now we are very much encouraged because many of them are already in different universities, and they’re making a difference,” says Ding, 46, head pastor at New Hope for eight years. “They can really talk about what happened to them.
“They are growing up, and what is really also nice to see is that they are now serving their own people, where they came from,” he says. “We don’t do much of the work anymore. They’re doing it because they’ve already grown up. That’s really neat.”
With all the things they’re doing for kids, Mona emphasizes the number-one thing is accepting Jesus into their hearts. Christine thinks the big value is Superkids is leading kids to Christ at that young age. “They will know Him better when they grow up,” she says.
“You build a generation that has a different set of morals,” Ding says. “It’s really nice seeing them that way.”
© 2006 Called and Sent Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
By Called and Sent Staff PHOTO GALLERY
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A girl dons a mock cape at Superkids Bible School at New Hope Christian Fellowship in east Metro Manila.
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Make that, piles in.
With apologies to Billy Joel, this is no piano bar. This is Superkids Bible School, a Saturday morning kids club hosted by New Hope Christian Fellowship in this eastern Metro Manila suburb. The church has run Superkids for seven years as an outreach to the families living in the squatter community around it. And for seven years, the kids have come, hundreds at a time.
They’re kids like Christian Conchas, age 13. Monica Buenviaje, age 6. J.R. Lopez, age 11. Hero Mahonay, age 10. Krysel Tadoy, age 6. Today they’re 200-strong, milling around the concrete floor, talking and playing, before Mona Teodoro takes the stage.
Mona, 46, the wife of New Hope pastor Ding Teodoro, commands the stage like a pop star. She shouts a Tagalog greeting into the microphone, and the kids shout back a response.
Today the kids will sing upbeat worship songs, learn a Bible verse, listen to a Bible story and sing the local version of “Happy Birthday” to one little girl. The enthusiasts crowd up front, the junior anarchists bringing up the rear, running and play-fighting.
Helping change kids, one at a time
One tussle turns ugly. A 10-ish boy and a much larger and angrier girl, maybe 14, get into a fistfight, a common sight on the street but not in here. Friends try to break it up. An adult worker eventually pulls the girl away and leads her backstage. The boy tells his side of the story to friends between sobs.
While the group belts out worship songs, Mona takes Angry Girl backstage. Behind a sign that reads, “Winning the Next Generation for Jesus,” Mona asks her why she was so mad. Angry Girl says it was because her mother scolded her that morning.
The girl returns to the crowd a half-hour later, looking remarkably calm. Mona shakes her head. “It’s just one thing on top of the other,” she says, making a stacking motion with her hands.
Superkids is helping kids deal with some of those things. Whether it’s serving a nutritious lunch (today it’s sinigang, a pork and vegetable dish), handing out backpacks and umbrellas for perfect attendance 10 weeks in a row, teaching them about Jesus or helping Superkids alumni pay for college, New Hope is giving kids like Christine Sismundo just that.
Christine started coming to Superkids six years ago, when she was 11. She asked Christ into her life right away and brought all five of her younger siblings to Superkids, too. Christine convinced her mother to come to New Hope, where she, too, accepted Jesus. Christine, 17, now is a sophomore at the University of the Philippines, studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree and helping out every Saturday at Superkids.
“I don’t ask her. She’s just here,” Mona says, smiling at Christine. “She’s really a lot of help.”
The first Christmas party
Help. That was the thing Ding and Mona knew was needed as they looked around them seven years ago—the kids begging at car windows and getting in trouble on the streets needed help. “Our heart was, what can we do for these children?” Mona says. “Suddenly just an idea came out: Why not throw a Christmas party for the street children?”
The idea was to serve a spaghetti dinner with some bread. Someone donated a lechon (roasted suckling pig, a Filipino delicacy). Other donations rolled in. Ding and Mona hoped for 200 kids to show up. They got 500. Suddenly their church had a whole new mission to the squatters around them.
“We saw that it would be an effective ministry,” Mona says. So after that Christmas party, they started their first 10-week module. They are just finishing their 27th.
Coming back for seconds
With a seven-year track record, the church now has former Superkids serving the current ones. Some dish stew on Saturday mornings; some play in the Sunday worship band at New Hope. Like Christine, they can remember where they were and where they’ve come because of the program.
Ding recalls one young woman they are helping put through school relaying her story. She told him that when she was a girl, she was on the streets. Then she got an invitation from New Hope for a Christmas party, and she started coming to Superkids after that. “Now I am in college,” she told Ding. “Now I have a different life. Look at what God did for me!”
Superkids’ format is simple, but effective: Give the kids a safe, fun place to learn about God and send them home with a full tummy. It’s more than most of them get at home in the squatter settlements, that’s for sure. As Ding works the crowd, tousling hair and mock-wrestling with some of the boys, his smile says he has great hopes for these kids—and that he loves being with them.
“Right now we are very much encouraged because many of them are already in different universities, and they’re making a difference,” says Ding, 46, head pastor at New Hope for eight years. “They can really talk about what happened to them.
“They are growing up, and what is really also nice to see is that they are now serving their own people, where they came from,” he says. “We don’t do much of the work anymore. They’re doing it because they’ve already grown up. That’s really neat.”
With all the things they’re doing for kids, Mona emphasizes the number-one thing is accepting Jesus into their hearts. Christine thinks the big value is Superkids is leading kids to Christ at that young age. “They will know Him better when they grow up,” she says.
“You build a generation that has a different set of morals,” Ding says. “It’s really nice seeing them that way.”
© 2006 Called and Sent Magazine. All Rights Reserved.