First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Shelley Welch

Shelley Welch, Project Manager for Awana's Children-At-Risk Initiative, talks about her call to work with children. It began with short term mission assignments and a 3 year ministry to street children in Kenya. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 26 May 2011
Audio Format:: other

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

I am just excited to see where God takes us in the future, and I've used this analogy. I said the train has pulled out, and I am holding on to the caboose for Gear Life, because God has just taken it fast, and I'm excited to see where it's going to go. Welcome to First Person, a weekly one-on-one conversation with a guest whose life has been transformed by God. I'm Wayne Shepard. Our guest this week is Shelley Welch, who works with the well-known children's ministry, Awana. Shelley is the project manager for Awana International's Children at Risk Ministry, and she'll tell you her story of calling in just a moment. But before I turn to today's guest, let me remind you of our website, where you can now learn more about today's guest, but you can also explore our audio archive of past programs and choose to listen to any previous first person. You'll find our website at firstpersoninterview.com. Just click on the archive button for the complete list of past programs, and then if you'd like to download any of our programs to your iPod or any MP3 player, search for First Person and subscribe to us on iTunes. Well, I think just about everyone has heard of Awana, the children's ministry, started many years ago, but did you know that Awana reaches out beyond families and churches here in this country to reach children in many other parts of the world, and sometimes that means overcoming difficult issues of poverty, disease, and neglect. Shelly Welch has dedicated her life to proclaiming the gospel to these children, but first God had to bring her to a place of submitting to his will. Shelly is now the project manager for Awana's Children at Risk Initiative, but she says it all started for her when she spent some time in Africa. From 1997 to 2000, I was working with street children in Nairobi, Kenya, and I got to Kenya because I had been a part of a short-term mission trip when I was finishing up my last year of college, and we went and built a home for 50 children who had been taken off of the streets because there was a big political meeting that was going to take place, and the president of Kenya at that time did not want street children to be on the streets. They wanted to clean it up for the dignitaries that were coming in. And so there were 50 children that were living out in the African bush in some old UNHCR-type tents, which those are tents that are just given by the UN for refugees, and we wanted to make a home for these kids that were real homes, and so I went out with a short-term trip for Youth for Christ. Was it always your plan to go to Africa and live like that? Oh, no. Not at all. Actually, I was just about to finish my degree in business marketing and had big plans of being in the fashion world and being a buyer traveling around the world, buying clothes and cloths that would make the latest, newest fashion trends. Boy, that's a long way from the streets of Kenya. Oh, it sure is. It really is, and I think what really happened was, after spending those three weeks with those kids in the middle of the African bush there, building a home where we were mixing concrete by hand, we were getting sand from a river bed, and we were doing this all together. Our team and these 50 kids, I just kind of got back on that plane coming home, and our team leader had said that we should write a letter to ourselves that she would send to us in about three months. And as I was writing this letter to myself, the questions that kept coming up are, "How is the fashion world going to help these kids?" And I think God just began to work in my heart saying, "I think there's something different for you to do." Talk to me more about those children. What were they going through and how are you able to help them? You know, I actually went back with you for Christ, and the reason was because that was really where I was exposed to the street children, was on that first trip for that three weeks. And there was this little boy, his name was Survivor, or his nickname, I should say, and he was four years old, and he had survived being thrown into prison with full-sized adults. And why? Well, because they have nowhere else for these street children to go, and so when they want to clean the streets, they either get rid of them, or they place them into a prison where no one will see them. And so as I was sitting there working with these guys for the three weeks, I looked at this little boy and how can you be four years old and have no parents and be living on the street by yourself, and then all of a sudden get thrown into prison with hardcore criminals. There's just something there that touched my heart and made me want to go back and work with these kids. Well, how do you reach a child like that? I mean, it has to be pretty hardened, right? It has to be pretty independent. Yeah, you know, that is a great question. For Survivor, he actually was so young. He hadn't been hardened yet, and so there are kids that you can rescue, and I say that with quotes because we can take them off the street, but it's really God who needs to change their heart and work in them. And we can help them along by doing programs for them and getting them into education and teaching them about the Word of God, but really it's God who needs to move in their hearts. And unfortunately, I did work with Youth for Christ for a year, and then I moved on and worked with another organization called Fellowship International Mission for two years. And there were some kids where we just, we had to say, I'm sorry, but you need to leave the home. You're not abiding by the rules, you're running away, you're bringing drugs in. And it's sad, but they're making a choice. So those who are open to what God has in store for them, you can work with them and the other ones you can do your best to help them, but when they make their choice, you need to let them make their choice. And there's a sad story about that. Another boy that just really touched me was named Joseph, and I met him when I was there on the short-term trip, and then when I came back, it took me 18 months to get back over to Kenya. And when I got there, I was so excited to see all the kids. And Joseph was still there, but after a while, Joseph decided he was done being at that home, and he wanted to go somewhere, and it wasn't at the home, and so he took off and he went back to the streets. And it was interesting because it was actually on Christmas Day, a couple years later, that I saw him. We were walking down the street, and actually my mom and my aunt had come to visit me for that Christmas, and we were walking through this park where often people would just go for a Sunday afternoon. And it was Christmas Day, so it was a holiday, so many people weren't out, but there was a group of street kids, and this one came up to me, and it was Joseph. And so I started talking with him, and it was really sad because Joseph was in his late teens, and you could see that he was making the wrong decision, and he was high on drugs, and scared my mom to death. I was thinking that, right. I was talking to this guy who was bigger than me, and we're in the middle of downtown Nairobi, and a friend was with us as well, and my mom kind of turned to the friend and said, "Does she do this all the time?" But it's one of those situations where you can't really help someone who doesn't want to be helped, so you have to spend time helping those who do want to be helped. And there are enough of these children who do want to be helped that we really can make a difference, just spending time with them. I'm sure you made a big difference. How did it change you? I just am so impassioned to work with those who are less fortunate. Being in Africa and seeing the struggles of some of these people on a daily basis, that created a desire in me to want to be able to devote my life to that, and to work for fighting the injustice that's out there. So you spent this time in Africa, and you had this ministry with these street children, and now you're back in the States. What caused you to come back to the U.S.? I wanted to get some further education. I had actually done an undergrad in business marketing, and thought that I should really, and that was at a State University, and thought I should really go back to school, get my masters and study in a Christian school, get some more education and background from what the Bible says we should be doing, and so I came back to get further education. And you ended up somehow, someway, at Awana International? I did. I actually came back here to the Chicago area, was doing my master's program here, and when I finished that, I started looking for jobs that, actually, it's kind of funny. I really wanted to, with that degree that I had now from a Christian background, I wanted to go and work for a non-government organization that wasn't Christian, and so I was looking for those kind of positions, and for some reason, I don't even remember why, I guess it was God. I said, "Well, let's go on to Awana's website." I didn't grow up in Awana. I had some friends who had kids in Awana, or, you know, who had worked for Awana. You must be the one child who grew up in America without going to Awana at church. Oh, I guess. I don't know. There are so many people who know about Awana. I mean, I knew about Awana, I just never grew up in Awana, so it was just kind of funny because I went on their website and they had an international program, specialist position, and I thought, "Well, I haven't really worked with translations too much, but I have a passion for the international field, and I just got, you know, education on how to work with, you know, further work with missions, so, you know, let me apply for this position." And so I did, and it ended up being the position that they offered to me that call. Shelly, how did you know that God wanted you where you are right now at Awana? You know, Wayne, that's funny because I would drive away every day for probably the first couple of months from work saying, "Thank you, God, for my job, but I don't know why I'm here." And you know, I was reading a lot of the Awana program material, but my heartbeat was still thinking, "I want to work with kids who are needy," and these kids, most of them come from good homes, and most of them have a chance to get educated in school, and they have, you know, food on the table and people who love them. I'm not quite sure what you want me to do here, and I can remember talking to my boss and thinking, you know, can't we take these clubs into some of these places where, you know, the kids are, like, in the slums, or in, you know, orphanages, or just tough places? And so I just kept going along, and then a couple of years ago, our Africa Project Director came up to me, and we were talking, and he said, "Would you be interested if we had an opportunity for you to go and spend some time in Africa doing some research and helping our missionaries on the field to look at possibly going into some refugee camps?" It didn't take long to say yes to it. Oh, it didn't take me long at all. I just looked at him, I said, "Yes, that is exactly what I want to do." I was excited, and I didn't think it was going to, you know, really come to fruition very quickly, but actually by the end of that week, we had our national directors in from Kenya and Zambia, and the project manager came back to me, and he said, "Well, I've talked with them, and we're ready to go, and I'm going to talk to your boss, and we're going to try and get you started on some research here." And I said, "All right, let's do it." And we'll learn more about Shelley and her service to children at risk around the world, coming up on First Person. Next time, we'll hear from Christopher Yuan, who was a prodigal, far from home. I really believe that I was God. I felt like I was invincible, and part of that is, you know, because of the drugs. When I look back, you see how I was just fooling myself. Christopher and his mother, Angela, tell both sides of their story his redemption from a life of homosexuality and drug use. Next time on First Person. Back to our conversation now with Shelley Welch, who is project manager for Awana International's Children at Risk Initiative. It is interesting when you go and talk with people, and you mentioned that you work for One International. They kind of give you a little funny look and say, "Really? I didn't know you guys were outside of the U.S." Or then when I take it a little bit farther, and I say, "Well, I'm working with the Children at Risk Initiative." They look at me and say, "Well, what is that? Tell me more about it." The Children at Risk Initiative is a new project that we have with Awana International. To reach children that the Awana program traditionally has not been able to reach. These are children who are in refugee camps, children that live in slums and major cities, children that are affected by HIV/AIDS, and we have a heart at Awana International to reach out to these kids, to share with them the hope of Jesus Christ through the programming that we have. We use a curriculum called True Seekers, which is, I just think, a fantastic curriculum because it takes you from creation to Christ, and it does it in a chronological way, but it really focuses in on the stories that really lead to the story of Christ and the redemption that we have in Christ. This curriculum was developed by Awana for this purpose? It was not developed for children at risk specifically, but it was developed by Awana in coordination with New Tribes Missions to reach into our international field to children who don't come from a Judeo-Christian background, and we're finding that it's a very helpful tool, particularly with the Children at Risk Initiative because a lot of these children, they come from a background that either is in a country, such as India or Nepal, where you have a lot of Hinduism and Islamic beliefs, so they don't really have a foundation on who Jesus Christ is, but you also can't just go right into that community and say who Jesus Christ is. You need to lead up to it. It also is very helpful for kids who do come from a Judeo-Christian background, but who have suffered from traumas like a refugee child who has had to run from their home. So to be able to see this story of God's love unfolding through the story from creation to Christ really gives these kids what we call a refuge, and it may not be the refuge we think of physically as in a house and food and school, but it's a refuge in knowing that there's something better and more out there than just this world that God is there with them. How do you make inroads? Let's say in a refugee camp, how do you, you can't just march in and say we're here. Oh no, no. How do you do it? It's interesting. I've been in four refugee camps in four different countries in Africa, and each camp is different. We have to go in with partners, and some of the partners may be local pastors who work in these camps and who have a good standing with the government. Some of the partners are actually organizations that are working with the refugees, and some of the organizations are actually refugees who have put themselves together and created an organization to reach out within the camp that they live in, and by going into a partnership with these people, they understand the culture so much better than we do, and they already know the people who are there. They know the pastors of the churches. They know the school teachers. They know the community workers, and so they have been able to put together what I call an informal meeting just with these leaders so that we can go in and share with them about the ministry of Awana International and see if it might be something that would be helpful for them in their ministry to children. So do you do a lot of training then of those who are on the scene locally so that they know how to take the material and teach you? We do. Yeah. Once we have what we call buy-in, which means that we have leaders who really want to see this happen. We don't want to go into a place where the leaders don't really care. We want them to find value in it and own it. And so once we have that, what happens is we start through a year-long process of training, and we call this our leader-based strategy. There's an event which is called the 414, which the pastors or the leaders of the schools or organizations come to, and we train them for a day on the importance of reaching children from the ages of four to 14. And this is a major portion of the population today, and they are the most receptive to the gospel. And oftentimes, in many churches, we just kind of ignore the children when we focus on the adults, but it's the children who are really ready to hear the message. It's amazing to hear this report, Shelley, but we're getting the big picture. I want you to make it personal, tell me some stories of how and where it's working and what impact it's having. Sure. Well, after the 414, we go into a five-day training called the seed planters, and that's where the leaders are really trained. They're given the resources and tools, and they are charged to go out and start clubs. And then they come back for a three-month follow-up, and then they come back for a one-year celebration. So you support them all along the way? We support them all along the way, yes, and we do that through financial help from donors and foundations and individuals who send in monthly gifts and who send in one-time gifts. But you asked about a personal story, and we have actually had a one-year celebration happen for over 40 churches in the Kibera slum in Kenya, Africa. And Kibera is one of the largest slums. At any given point, there are between 600,000 to 1 million people living on one square mile of land. So it is a very densely populated area. I was given the stack of papers, and I've been to Kenya, I've lived there, I've gone in with Awana, and I've seen the places that are using the Awana program. And so here I am at my desk reading through the stack of papers, and what those stack of papers were testimonies from these 40-some churches on how the Awana program is making a difference in their church, in their communities. And some of the stories are that we've had over 500 children come to Christ. This is just from one church. We've had several parents come up to us and tell us that they've seen noticeable change in their children's behavior. They're better disciplined, they care more about themselves, and they're taking responsibility around the house, they're practicing their verses. We've had an organization say that they've gotten a better awareness within the community because of the difference that the community is seeing from these kids who are attending the Awana Club at their organization. We also have had parents coming to Christ because parents are seeing their kids changed, and they're wondering why. And so then they go, and the child shall lead them. Yes, exactly, they go and they find out what's going on in these clubs, and the leaders are able to share with the parents, and the parents are coming to Christ, and churches are being built and are becoming stronger. I want to share a personal story that just touches my heart of how this program for children at risk initiative is making a difference at a camp called Jikaze. It's a camp for internally displaced people, and those are people who flee their home because of persecution, but they still remain in their home country. And there's a leader, her name is Grace, and she is a volunteer from a partner organization of ours, and she went and got trained at a seed planters, came back, trained leaders, and she took it one step further. Not only is she helping to run an Awana Club every week with over 100 children in a field because they don't have a church building, but she is also staying after that club to work with about 30 to 40 young ladies and their teenagers to early 20s, and she is just discipling them and mentoring them and talking with them about their importance to God and about their influence to the kids that they're serving in the club, and two of the leaders she has actually do club with babies on their back that are their children, they're 17 and 19, and they were raped during this post-election violence that occurred in this country. They've got a hard life as it is, but then to have some kind of trauma like that happen to them is just unimaginable for many of us, but then to see the importance of someone like Grace who comes alongside of them, she models Christ. She does, and it's amazing, and I got to spend time with a couple of these leaders this past summer, actually had tea with them in one of them's home, and it's just amazing. This is the difference that this program is making for children around the world who normally people wouldn't see, wouldn't hear, wouldn't care about. It's so obvious that God has put this in your heart. You started out going down one path and that radically changed to another. No regrets? Oh, no regrets. I am just excited to see where God takes us in the future, and I've used this analogy. I said the train has pulled out, and I am holding onto the caboose for dear life, because God is just taking it fast, and I'm excited to see where it's going to go. I enjoyed the conversation with Shelly, and I'm always amazed by the way God reaches people's hearts and how they respond in obedience, serving Christ with their whole heart. We'll put links to Shelly's ministry through Awana on our website, FirstPersonInterview.com. You'll learn more about Awana's assistance to local churches around the world and reaching whole families for Christ. Again, you'll find those links on our webpage, FirstPersonInterview.com. That website also contains an audio archive of all of our past interviews, so if you are a newcomer to FirstPerson, you can always go online to firstpersoninterview.com, click on the archive button, and choose from any of the interviews on the list. Well, next week, a mother and son join us to tell their story of a prodigal son, who even though deeply involved in homosexuality and drugs, was miraculously delivered. Now with my thanks to friend and producer Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Sheppard. Join us next week right here for First Person. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]