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Henri Molenhuis molenhuis@hotmail.com September 2007 Little did I realize what the Lord had planned for me when I became a YFC’er in late 2001, early 2002. I have no formal degrees, other than a high school diploma, which I didn’t finish till I was 26 but what was the rush? I love classic rock, history and science fiction, and sports. I am older, married my high school sweetheart Susan, back in 1978, have three great kids and a granddaughter. I have done a lot things for work from hatchery foreman, to owning a bicycle assembly and repair business, but I gained most of my people skills being the live-in proprietor of a general store in a small village outside of Stratford, Ontario. Oh…and did I say I love kids? Things I do:
• help out at two children’s programs; one after school, one in the evening, as well as another jr. high program all at different churches.
• mentor boys from grade 4 – 12 one-on-one, and one group mentoring pilot program
• run lunchtime Campus Life Jr. High Program at two schools • am involved in a school council as a community rep • am part of a team of youth pastors and YFC staff that create and perform assemblies based on positive character attributes in 8 local elementary
schools, and have been invited by the school board to perform for
another 36 schools *** (see below)
• basically being a servant of the schools *** The HERO Project (acronym for Helping Everyone Respect Others) is an assembly program designed to impact elementary age children (ages 4-12) with positive character attributes, such as honesty, integrity, compassion (for the complete list see www.heroproject.ca).
By creating and performing a multimedia hour-long assembly complete with live original and rewritten music, video and power-point, as well as interactive skits involving the HERO crew (in costume of course) the youth are kept involved through lots of giveaways, as well as participating in the skits that are meant to make a point about a character attribute.
By Partnering with local youth pastors we build relationships with students and school as well, impacting them with the love of Christ, the way St. Francis of Assissi recommended. We do the assemblies from a moral point of view, because it’s the right thing to do for the benefit of the community and society in general; but we are seeing youth come to the after-school programs we each individually run.
Here are the links to the videos that we have posted so far in regards to the HERO Project http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2i_N3P4Q24 pirate show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBG5Ftqqb4k jr. high show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uir-5nYrjVU space show Also we have begun a HERO Project website....its still under construction.....but the website address is www.heroproject.ca Henri’s reflections:
Now you might ask, where does Christ come into all of this? Well, the schools would not let us do the assemblies if we were preaching Christ verbally. So we are basically being servants to the schools, building relationships with students, staff, admin and leadership, and at the end of each show we introduce ourselves, where we are from and what other things we run. Now we are seeing kids from the schools coming to our programming at the respective churches, and YFC places of ministry.
Being a longtime resident of Stratford Ontario, I truly believe that it is vital for people called to minister to youth (and adults as well) to stay where they have been called for a long time. Longevity allows for relationship building; building of trust; which the Spirit uses to open doors and hearts. Kids are such open books that God allows us write in, to build relationships and trust, and to introduce to Jesus Christ, and sometimes that takes a while… So we love being in and working in Stratford. We believe that’s where God wants us to be.
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