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Children lead the way to faith
No one could get Viqui to return to church. Not her family. Not Margrit Kipfer de Barrón, who serves the Sinaí Mennonite congregation in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, though she tried all her pastoral skills to coax Viqui back. She visited Viqui. She prayed with her. She used reasoning. With no results. It took a child to bring Viqui back to God and her church family. Viqui’s large family is active at Sinaí Mennonite Church. Many of her nine siblings provide leadership in the congregation, but Viqui left her church and its moral expectations to enjoy life with her new boyfriend. When the boyfriend left her and their young daughter, Miranda, for another woman, the fun turned sour, and Viqui grew angry with God. Viqui’s sisters took four-year-old Miranda to church with them. Miranda blossomed in the caring atmosphere of the congregation, but she wanted the loving embrace of the community to be complete. She wanted it to include her mother. She wanted to be able to snuggle into her mother’s arms during sermons the way she’d seen other kids do.
“Mama, how come all the other children go to church with their mothers, and you don’t want to go with me?” The following Sunday, Viqui and Miranda sat together in church. “Now, Viqui is interested in God again,” said Kipfer de Barrón. Kipfer de Barrón, a Swiss Mennonite, brings together the gifts of three continents in her ministry to children. Supported by Mennonite Mission Network and the Swiss Mennonite mission agency, she works alongside her husband, Freddy Barrón, pastor of the Sinaí Mennonite Church. Before arriving in Bolivia in 1993, Kipfer de Barrón taught school in Switzerland. However, she believes that the church provides a more effective forum than school for teaching children about what really matters in life. “[When I was teaching in Switzerland], I began wondering if I was struggling to teach the teenagers something that wasn’t really important for their lives,” Kipfer de Barrón said. “When I work with kids in the church, it is different. I’m teaching something I’m really convinced of.” As the church helps children move across the boundary from a meaningless existence into a place of belonging and love, it must challenge social and economic barriers that manifest themselves as poverty, teen pregnancies, alcohol and drugs, Kipfer de Barrón said. Kipfer de Barrón and the Sinaí Mennonite Church help the children and youth of their community gain self-esteem, which is essential in crossing boundaries, through participating in musicals. “Through musicals they can learn to be creative and to see that they are able to achieve something,” she said. Some of the parents step into a church building for the first time in their lives when they come to proudly applaud their children’s performances that end with an invitation to become followers of Jesus. Sinaí Mennonite Church also promotes self-esteem and a sense of belonging through many other activities. Sunday school, “Happy Hour” club, Bible quizzes, discipleship and leadership-training classes and youth conferences provide alternatives to carnival-time partying. “If we allow kids to stay captives of the worldview they are born into, they become very fatalistic. They think that there is no way to better their situation,” Kipfer de Barrón said. “[At Sinaí], we motivate kids to get involved in the work of the church. Even if they are very young, they already have gifts they can share with others.
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