Conducting a Children's Program at the Algonquin College in Ottawa

On our way to Ottawa for the May long weekend.

We were on the road again travelling to Ottawa.

I was very excited for the past couple of months at the thought of conducting a children's ministry program in Ottawa, outside my familiar territory of my home town.

We were at a 2 day conference at this college site in Ottawa

In preparation for the May long weekend conference, we had travelled to Waterloo and Ottawa to train two groups of youth leaders on two different weekends in April.

The conference was attended by many people from various parts of Canada

I researched and prepared a lot of music, videos, and presentation material on power points including the curriculum material, program content, games and safety procedures etc.

The conference site was spacious and comfortable

I started packing our car well in advance arriving at the conference location the evening before to set up the room.

We had a packed schedule for the conference.

The Wifi in the building was not always reliable.

On the first day,  We were at the conference site at 8am to meet with the volunteers going over some of the most important part of the program.

I was involved in the children's program for two full days

I was surprised at how long we had to stay for each session, with the first session starting at 9am -12:45PM, the second session from 2:00-5:45pm, and the third session from 7:30pm- 9:30pm. I was totally exhausted at the end of the day.

I just hope that the conference attendees had time to connect and network with others from other regions of Canada.

Volunteers helped us a lot at the conference

However, the most frustrating part for me was the unreliability of the wifi network in the meeting rooms.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Imagine my excitement after much research on the internet, I found some excellent videos and music to illustrate my topics in my presentations.

Children loved listening to the bible stories

I could hardly wait to see the expressions on the children's faces when I presented this material


Unfortunately, we encountered so many technical and wifi problems that I could not use some of the best prepared material .

Crafts activities - a popular program with the children 

I need to remind myself of this technical problem should I be invited again to this location for future presentations.

Children enjoyed the variety of activities offered at the conference 

One thing I was glad to have accomplished was the good rapport I have established with the children and some of the key youth leaders in the Ottawa region.

The children's light show on the last evening

At the beginning, the older children were hesitant in joining our program, but once they were in, they loved to come back!

A creative craft by one of the children

There were a couple of challenging issues but the dozen or so volunteers rose to the challenge and gave me a hand with the program.

Praise God! My first time in directing a two day, morning to evening children's program in Ottawa, the capital city of Canada and it went well!

R.T.

Algonquin College

Ottawa, Ontario