Christmas Greetings from Therese and David Goodwin and Kidsreach.

Dear Friends,

2010 has been an incredible year at Kidsreach – like no other. I must admit that at the start of the year I was a bit fearful of all our projects, how they would be provided for, etc. As it turned out, it was a year when we had to totally trust in God and God came through.

This year we have been blessed to have ministered in 9 different countries with over 700 leaders attending week long training schools. Many more hundreds attended one day seminars and thousands attended conferences and meetings. But that is not the end of it! As this year finishes and the new year starts, I will be in Siberia training 40 leaders who work with some very needy children.

It is a humbling experience to train and resource leaders in countries that have far far worse conditions than we do in NZ and Australia . Many of these people have become real friends.

For those who have given towards our mission effort, thank you so very much.

We are praying for you as you enjoy Christmas with your family and friends and hope you all get a holiday.

Therese and I will be away from 14-26 January.

We thank you for being a part of the Kidsreach family. We look forward to working with you again in 2011.

God bless you,

David and Therese Goodwin

Director

Ministry Opportunity in NZ

Kidsreach has a need for someone to give about 2 days a month (spread over the month – doesn't have to be in one block) to assist in our growing missions program. It would suit someone with administration and spreadsheet skills and a passion for children and missions. Please email David for more details. David. kidsreach@gmail.com

The Christmas Story

For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. - Isaiah 9:6

"In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria .) And everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David , because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savoir has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.'

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests.'

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, 'Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has told us about.' So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.

When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about the child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen which were just as they had been told."

Luke 2:1-17

Thanks for your Patience the Year

Some of you may not realise how we operate at Kidsreach. We do not have staff in Australia . I work from home and so if we have not always attended to your needs as efficiently as we might have, then I apologise. We do value your friendship and custom.

Mission to PNG 7-16 November 2010, New Ireland Province

A church like no other

Everyone came to the meetings

Conference Meetings

Conference Delegates New Ireland 2010

Regional Children’s Ministry Conference and School of Children’s Counselling

Pastor David Goodwin Reporting

From the time of the opening meeting it is hard to describe the atmosphere of joy and expectation that there was in this place.

This was my first trip to New Ireland, a beautiful Island to the northeast of mainland Papua New Guinea. . The location is at a Uniting Church Bible College, right on the beach. In the main hall where the meetings will be held, there is no floor, only beach sand. The 150 attending will camp in tents and buildings around the campus. The only place to wash for the 9 days will be the sea water at the beach. It is extremely hot and humid here - about as hot and uncomfortable as I have ever experienced but it does not matter as you feel the atmosphere of praise, worship and expectations. There is beautiful singing (The Island people of PNG really know how to sing and harmonize). The people here have been praying for this for a long time. All the pastors and ministers of Kavieng are present to join in the opening ceremony. This is truly a multi-denominational occasion. God has The children are also here – from all the churches, welcoming us in with a magnificent joyful welcome with timbrels, singing and dance. You might even see a frog or crab or gecko making their way across the stage area.

I spoke at 16 sessions during the conference. The evenings were full on ministry times with teaching during the day. On Sunday There was a combined church service with hundreds of children all come to be prayed for. In the middle of my message I noticed how intently the children were listening. I thought this is the Spirit of God but then some started to laugh and to point at my head. A gecko had climbed up my back and onto my head and stayed there until I brushed him off.

Every child was prayed for. It was wonderful to see the children touched by God.

The School of Counseling was the second event with all the delegates staying on to learn basic principles in helping children. For many of them even learning how to listen to a child and connect with them, it was a very new experience.

Praise God for an awesome 10 days. But I was glad to get back on an air conditioned plane!

My next trip to PNG is in April 2011. This time it will be in the cool highlands.

Kidsreach Mission Appeal to Siberia

Dear Kidsreach Supporter

Greetings

I have accepted an invitation to go to Siberia by a NZ missionary who serves as the Director of the Children's Rights Organisation. Here is is part of the invitaiton:

The need here is urgent, as many churches and our own organisation work with children from very disfunctional families and from orphanages where there is a great deal of child abuse officially ignored, most of the time. In consequence many of the children we deal with are seriously damaged and need special understanding and ministry but we are very ill-equipped to provide this. We need much teaching and knowledge about how to build relationships with such children and how to see them set free from the inner hurts and the consequences of abuse over many years.

There is very little available in the way of healing ministry for adults here and none at all for children, so your ministry will be foundational for most of the people coming. In addition, whereas in western societies there is a basic knowledge od things psychological and access to counselling information, that is totally lacking here and people do not know where to turn for help when they become Christians and realize that there are problems. As an indication of this, I would mention that the Russian government is only now setting up a new profession - social workers. There have never been such people in this society before! Not that that would be the answer to the many problems that exist - but at least it would be something!

In short, I would urge you to come as we have discussed, and we will trust the Lord to make it possible for as many people as possible to take part in the training programme. I also trust that you will be able to find personal sponsorship to cover your costs of travelling to and from Russia .

Date of Visit: 28 December – 8 January
Budget: Airfare cost: $3000.00
Accommodation and resources $500
Total appeal $3500

Any money raised over this amount will be used to purchase resources.

May God bless you

David Goodwin

How to Donate

New Zealand
Online or Branch deposit
Account name Kidsreach
Bank Westpac
BSB 031531
Account 0035418 02

Post
Kidsreach
POB 305
Waikanae


Australia
Online or Branch deposit
Account name Kidsreach
Bank ANZ
BSB 012874
Account 109319242

Post
Kidsreach
POB 265
North Richmond NSW 2754

For online donations, please put:'Siberia' and your surname for your reference and email us to let us know you have done this david.kidsreach@gmail.com

For postal donations and online, please include your name and address for receipting.

Germany and Finland October 2010

David arrived in Germany on Tuesday after leaving Therese at Singapore who flew back to Sydney while he completes the next part of the trip, Finland and Germany.
The main task in Germany is to take part in a consultation for a new curriculum that is being written for teens in China. The impact of this will be immense so it is worth the time. It turned out to be a great time of sharing and helping them take it to the next stage.

Friday morning (15/10/10) David arrived in Finland to snow! This wasn’t expected, even by the locals so it was stop at the next shop to buy a warm jacket and a couple of jumpers.

In Finland David is taking a 5 day School of Children’s Counseling (80 delegates) after which he is taking part in various discussions with children’s ministry leaders, and doing a weekend seminar and ministry in Lahti.

In the photo you can see the delegates with some snow in the background. The location is a Bible College facility. Beautiful surrounds with a lake in the background. Couldn’t be more beautiful!

A Christian television station is talking about doing a 1.5-3 hour program with me on Friday!! Thanks for your prayers.

More Photos Indonesia

Indonesia Photos

David and Therese in Indonesia October 2010

Travel
David and Therese flew out of Sydney first thing Saturday morning 2nd October, enjoying the great service on the new Singapore airlines A380. We will not mention how many movies David watched but it was 3!

From Singapore it was a quick trip to Surabaya, East Java and a relief when all our resources got through customs without any problem.

From there we were picked up by Pastor Lexy and his wife Lies (pronounced 'A-lis'), were at the airport to pick us up and take us on the 3 hour drive high up in the hill country. They are a lovely couple who run 'Salmat' in Batu – a beautiful children’s ministry training and resource centre high up in the mountains. People travel there from all over the country for training as well as resources.

No road rules it seemed, and people ducking in and out of the traffic begging. Three lanes of traffic, with trucks, and vans and millions of motorbikes, oh my goodness, if you are not used to it, it is best to keep the eyes closed.

The training centre at Batu is lovely. The temperature is pleasant, around 22 or 23 most of the time, much easier to live with than down in the lower parts of the country.

Very quickly we discovered that every mosque has a loud speaker! The chanting starts at 3.30 am and goes for half an hour. It is a good time to have our own worship time.

At 6am a worker arrives at the door with 2 buckets of hot water for us to have a throw-over bath, so that’s a bit different, just like camping.

The people are lovely, they are so helpful. The food is delicious, every meal is lovely, all prepared by a group of beautiful workers who seem to take delight in serving in this way. “Are we really on the Mission Field?” we are tempted to ask.

Monday to Tuesday
We had our opening ceremony Monday afternoon and the first meeting Monday night. Therese was asked to sing at the opening ceremony and will be singing every day at some of the sessions, which is great; she is going to enjoy that.



David is speaking all day every day, on various counselling subjects, which include
• Defining Pastoral Care
• Families under pressure
• Self esteem
• Working with volunteers
• Team building
• Strategies to deal with anger
• Trauma, crisis counselling
• Grief
• Forgiveness
• Connection and attachment
• Burnout
• Kids Keep Safe, helping abused kids, safety and protection policies.

In between times he has had a few counselling appointments as well.



Forty three delegates are registered for the conference plus a few staff and helpers -about 50 in total.

The delegates come from various organisations that specialise in helping children and families, as well as churches. They receive a certificate at the end of the week. Only a few speak any English so all the meetings are through interpreter. We have two interpreters who work very hard. Cecile and Deborah.

Wednesday- Thursday
Therese was asked to take devotions on Wednesday morning and spoke about the woman who broke the alabaster box and poured out the precious perfume over Jesus, and I spoke about our need to pour out our praise and worship to him for all he has done for us.

On Thursday night, David spoke what it really means to forgive. This was after the session on child abuse. We discover the delegates here have come because they desire to help others, but a lot of them are broken and wounded themselves, and as they came forward to forgive, God ministered to them in a very powerful way. There were many, many tears. We asked them to symbolically break a stick – meaning to give up the need for revenge against those that had hurt them.

After this it was camp fire time which included worship and putting their broken sticks on the fire.

Then came an amazing time of fun and celebration. Each province in Indonesia has their own traditional dances. So we sang and danced together!

We were asked to end the segment with a dance, but because we don’t dance together, it was pretty abysmal. Not a good representation of Australia or NZ I am afraid! Therese suggested at one stage that David did the Haka but that wasn’t going to happen!

We improvised and then everyone joined in with whatever it was we were doing. Watch out for the video!

Next, we all sat down around the fire, and prayed for each province represented after a spokesperson from each shared what the needs were. It was a very precious time. We finished off by worshipping the Lord. I could not believe we were where we were, the lights from the town twinkling below us, our hands raised praying for this beautiful country.

Friday
Friday morning David spoke on burnout. We had another ministry time with the delegates, and Therese shared a brief testimony with them her own experience of burnout and recovery, which was really the first time she had done it in this kind of situation, and as we prayed for those who had responded, the Holy Spirit ministered. The conference finished on Friday afternoon with everyone receiving their certificates.

Saturday
This morning, Saturday, we had a meeting for the 15 workers who more or less work full time at Sarfat. They had missed out on all the sessions because they were serving behind the scenes all week.

David spoke about the body of Christ and the gifts that God has given each one of us and asked them to make a hat out of paper and write the particular attribute on it that they felt was the most important contribution to the team. Together we then made a ‘living sculpture’ of where each attribute fitted in the picture of the ministry. Pastor Lexy said everyone was spot on with their own personal attribute and Lies said that it was wonderful for the team to realise those things for themselves and to see how each ones gift contributes to the whole ministry here. It was a wonderful time.

Then it was off to Malang and shopping, the traffic once again causing Therese emotional traumas as we witnessed the seemingly millions of drivers – mainly on motorbikes. Most of them were loaded to the max with anything and everything. One bike we saw had an enormous cage of gas cylinders! What was hard to accept was the bikes with whole families which usually included small children.

In the evening we ministered at a youth night for the children from the orphanage. These children were all rescued from trouble spots several years ago in a nearby province, some of whom saw their own parents killed. They are from between 12 and 18 years of age now. Pastor Lexy built the orphanage which is situated near the Bible College.

David started the evening with a game which ended up quite riotous. They loved it. After worship, Therese sang Amazing grace, and for the second time this trip called upon her fairly dormant guitar skills for accompaniment.

Their singing was amazing, so beautiful.

David shared with them an amazing mission’s story from his Sri Lanka experiences. Through that he shared with them that God gives to each one of his children a call to go and share the Gospel, and that God was also calling them to a mission in life. He asked them if they wanted to say ‘yes’ to Jesus to come forward. They all did, and as we moved around the kids praying for them, many kids cried as God ministered to them.

It is astounding to us the sadness’s children go through. We had relatively happy childhoods with wonderful parents and it is hard to even think about what so many children experience.

Jesus truly is the great healer, the great deliverer and the God of new beginnings. He gives beauty for ashes. The kids left tonight just full of joy


Sunday- Monday
More news to come….