Mr urged youth to eschew violence, Monday October 11, 2010, pg 12

The Member of Parliament (MP) for the Ablekuma North, Mr Justice Joe Appiah, has called on the youth to eschew social vices and be law-abiding.

This, he said, would prevent them from falling prey to acts that could alienate them from their future progress.

Mr Appiah gave the advise at the thanksgiving service of this year’s Children’s Camp of the Accra Presbytery of the Global Evangelical Church (GEC) in Accra. It was on the theme: Faithful stewardship, key to divine blessing”. Over 600 children drawn from 28 congregations of the 63 congregations that made up the presbytery attended the one-week camp.

Mr Appiah noted that, “Indiscipline, promiscuity, pre-marital sex could lead you to teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and ‘sakawa’ which continue to devastate the lives of many in this country”.

The MP congratulated the organisers of the camp and urged the youth to be obedient to their teachers, church leaders and role models and take active part in all communal efforts in their respective communities.

Rev. Prosper Dzomeku, Director, Missions and Evangelism of the Church, in a sermon, said without being faithful, the youth would not become the responsible adults the church and the state needed.

Rev. Mrs Vivian Doh, the Co-ordinator of the Children’s Ministry, asked parents to continue to provide the  basic needs for their children “because they are the root and future of the church, the nation, as well as the world”.

“Our vision is to build up all the children very well to know Christ and it is our hope that more children will evangelised and next year, the number of children attending the camp would double,” Rev. Doh said.

Present at the service was Rev. Matt Moffett, West Africa Area Director of Evangelism Explosion International, a Christian non-governmental organisation based in the US, who is in the country with his wife, Mrs Toni Moffet to train children, youth and adults in evangelism.

The programme dubbed ‘Hope for Kids,’ is a 12-week discipleship course that teaches children how to share their faith and tell people about Jesus. About 57 Sunday school teachers of the GEC have been trained so far.

“Our goal for this year is to train 900 churches in Ghana reaching 30,000 children and those children will then reach 300,000 children with the ‘path way of hope,’’ an evangelistic booklet,” Rev. Moffett said.