Remember flannelgraph stories?

There is a woman in Ft. Wayne, Indiana who taught children in Sunday School for many years. She loved the kids and wanted to make the Bible come alive for them, so she began to buy flannelgraph materials so she could help them visualize the stories she taught.

Over the years, she accumulated high-quality flannelgraph figures and backgrounds with which she could depict almost any story in the Bible. The kids loved it. They loved her, too.

But, in came kids television programming, then the internet, and all kinds of dramatizations of Scripture. And this Sunday School teacher was getting older and not teaching so much anymore. The flannelgraph materials, still beautiful after having been used with much care, were sorted and packed away behind plastic covers and in secure boxes.

Through her family, this dear lady heard about the village ministry Reach the Nations leads in Pakistan. The children in these villages don't have ready access to television, or books, or the internet. She wondered if they might like to hear Bible stories with pictures to help to make the stories come to life as they had done so many years ago for her young students.

The materials were carefully packaged by her daughter and sent to RTN. From there they were forwarded to Pakistan where they were received by Mehboob and his team ministering in Punjab.

As Mehboob, Adnan, and Irfan unpacked the packages of materials, they were thrilled as they thought of the reactions the children would have when they began to tell the stories of Jesus displaying these pictures and backgrounds.

Isn't it just like God to take a treasured tool for communicating His Word and to put it to work all over again in a place where the teaching is so needed? We are thanking God for His provision and for the retired Sunday School teacher in Indiana and her generous gift.