Several new people joined our small group for the summer, and we expected there to be many absences on various weeks. Out of that came an idea for an ice-breaker last Sunday that was probably my favorite of all time!  I’ll call it the Speaker Phone Ice-Breaker.

All we did was gather everyone around a speaker phone, kids included, and call each person missing that night.  When they or their voice mail answered, everyone yelled, “Hi _______!!!!”; then I said that we missed them and [this person] is going to pray for you; at which point I handed the phone to someone to pray for them.

We made five calls. A different person from our group prayed each time. One was a five year old son of one of our families! It was awesome.  One call was made to our loved family who had just, sadly, moved away; but it happened to be their anniversary!

It was a phenomenal ice-breaker all around – getting the kids involved, sharing our love, letting people know we missed them, and praying for each other.

BUT, the greatest moment of it all came the next day, when our co-leaders and soon-to-depart missionaries to Niger, Jon and Christine Banke, sent this on our group’s Facebook page…