Two children sharing the gospel. They went out. They were trained. Children reaching children. They went out into the neighborhood. They were teaching boys and girls to share in the gospel. And a couple of policemen walked up. The fact there was three of them walked up federal police. This is not in the US. They walked up and asked them, what are you guys doing? And the children said, well, we're just telling these other children about Jesus. And they said, well, tell us about that. What what does that mean? And so they actually shared the gospel with these three federal police officers. They came to Christ and they said, hey, can we introduce you to our pastor, which is just down the street. And so they walked with the policeman, down to the pastor, to the church and said, pastor, these are the three policemen we just met. We just led them to Christ, and we wanted to introduce them to you and to the church. Well, our guest today is Fred Pry, and Fred is with the Children's Evangelical Fellowship. Get that right. Child Evangelism Fellowship. You're good. Very close. I screwed that up last time. That's all right. That's all right. Well, Fred, well, thank you for joining The Covenant Eyes Podcast. I appreciate it. So, Fred, would you just start out? Just tell us a little bit about yourself. But also, you know how you ended up at CEF. So I'm a second career missionary. I start off in the business world for over 25 years. And then God called me from the business world into full time missions with CEF. And you know, it's amazing to be part of a ministry that reaches the most vulnerable in our society. And I believe that's children. They're faced with so many things today that stealing their hope. And it's it's just a great ministry. Part of now how I came into CEF is a little interesting. My children were involved with CEF before I was and when I what I mean by that is they became Christian youth in action. So they were trained by CEF and then they did summer backyard Bible clubs known as five day clubs. And I saw such a change in their hearts and in their lives. They were different after doing that. You know, it's one thing. Our kids were always in church. We are a church, family were Christian family. Kids came to Christ a young age, but it wasn't until they started teaching other boys and girls the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, that they started to really own that for themselves. Their faith became real to them. As you know, it's one thing to be listening and, you know, to the Bible teaching and preaching, etc., etc. but then when you start teaching the Bible to children, it made a difference in their lives. And it was so impactful. And that's really what drew me into the ministry. And it's just it's been now over 22 years and God just continues to use us and bless us. And it's exciting to be part of this ministry. Yeah. That's wonderful. And the ministry has been around about 85 years. Yeah, 80. Eight, 88. 88 years now. Yes. Okay. Keeps going. Yeah. I got to share with you. I think I told you this last time, but the five day clubs. Yes, both myself and my wife, which I didn't realize until just this week. We were. We both committed our lives to Christ through five day clubs. Oh. That's exciting. Oh. That's great. So we've known about this ministry for a long time. That's so good. Yeah. Well, Fred, tell us a little bit about the different things that you do. I know you have different clubs for different groups, and you have some online in person things. Share a little bit more about just the scope of. Sure. Sure. Happy to do that. Yeah. We have we have what we call seven highways to reach boys and girls. And basically it's just avenues for the gospel. Yeah. And it's good news club, five day club, which is a backyard Bible club, a good news club meets in schools or community centers. And it's just exciting to see children involved in those ministries. But we also have party clubs. Christmas Party Club is a huge part of our ministry. In fact, we just completed a celebration on what God did this past Christmas and in worldwide ministry through Christmas Party Clubs, which is a one day, one time event. Sharing the gospel, sharing the true meaning of Christmas. We reached over 12.5 million children just this past Christmas. Wow. And that's and that's worldwide in places that you couldn't imagine going up the Amazon, where materials are carried on rafts and boats and and people wearing life jackets because they don't know how to swim and just amazing what, what. Our workers are committed, workers are doing trekking mountains in the snow in some of these mountainous regions. It really is truly amazing. So Christmas Party Clubs is one of those we have camps for. That happened over the summer, but even some in the fall for children to attend. And that's not in every location but many places around the world. Like in Greece, we have a strong camp ministry in Greece and it's powerful. But here in the US as well, we have camps around the country. Okay, so that's one of the the highways is just our summer ministries. But then we have children reaching children and that's a fairly new ministry. It's ministry where we're teaching some of the older Good news Club children how to share the gospel with their peers. And the beautiful thing about that is kids are so bold with the gospel. You know, you and I, we get an elevator and we don't want to say a word. Anybody. But kids don't talk to anybody. And when they know what they're talking about, when they're taught to share the gospel, they'll share it with their peers, their family members, mother, dad. And it's just amazing what God has done. In fact, I have a story of two children sharing the gospel. They went out. They were trained children reaching children. They went out into the neighborhood. They were teaching boys and girls to share in the gospel. And a couple policemen walked up. The fact there was three of them walked up federal police. This is not in the US. They walked up and asked them, what are you guys doing? And the children said, well, we're just telling these other children about Jesus. And they said, well, tell us about that. What what does that mean? And so they actually shared the gospel with these three federal police officers. They came to Christ and they said, hey, can we introduce you to our pastor, which is just down the street? And so they walked with the policeman, down to the pastor, to the church and said, pastor, these are three policemen. We just met. We just led them to Christ, and we wanted to introduce them to you and to the church. And it's just neat what God. Does through these bold witnesses for Christ. Yeah. In fact, he calls each of us that know Christ to be awake. Absolutely. You know, we all are to answer that. Yeah. That great commission. Yeah. And boys and girls can be powerful witnesses. So that was another ministry? No, that is amazing story. I love that. Now you also, you have a ministry for military children. Correct? Yes. Military children's ministry is a wonderful ministry. We're currently in 33 bases. That's the last number. I heard 33 installations around the country. And it's just a powerful ministry. These children are vulnerable. They move so often. It's hard. If anybody knows the military, they're moving every 2 to 3 years on average to a new place. So children don't know how to really make friends. The friends don't don't go deep. Sure. But one thing that does happen through this military children's ministry is when they go to a new installation, often there'll be a good news club meeting. So there is a connection there, and it's a powerful ministry. Plus these children are faced with, well, you know, some of the some of the parents are in active duty. So is my dad coming home? Yeah. Isn't my dad coming home? Is my mom coming home? Isn't my mom. And it's a scary time for these boys and girls. And to be introduced to Christ and to know that their eternity. Yeah, is settled in. To know that they can pray when they have a relationship with Christ. They can pray for their parents to keep, for God to keep them safe. That's amazing. That's a powerful thing. It is. That's a great ministry. That's wonderful. Well, Fred, back in two kids nowadays, it's different than when you and I grew up. I mean, it is all about the internet and computers and social media and all of these things. It's a new world. And kids are are different. So how have you you guys adapted to facing that reality? What kinds of things do you do to to reach kids through that? Yeah. So we do have a digital ministries department at CEF. It really started from a result of Covid. You know, we all look at Covid and say, oh, that was so that was so tough. But actually it did some good things for ministries like ours. It really pushed us to create materials that will reach to the kids that have screens that they're on the screen. And if you know statistics, they're saying even children as young as four or spending eight hours a week in front of a screen, and that's not a television screen, that's a screen connected to the internet in some way. Yeah. And so when you realize that we realized very quickly that we're not going to reach all the children of the world if we don't head this direction and put some content, good content, biblical content, Christian content, salvation, evangelistic content online. And so CEF is doing that. We have thousands of shorts, live action animation on our unite channel. And it's it's free for kids. There's no cost for children for parents to use that they can download the the episodes, they can watch them offline, they can watch them online. But it's it's good content and it's not connected to other advertising that they might see on YouTube. So it really is a safe place for children to be connected and be introduced to the gospel. The other thing we realize that our one of our our vision statement is to reach every child, every nation, every day. To do that, we knew we weren't going to be able to be face to face with boys and girls all over the world. We knew that we had to have a platform that would reach those that won't ever come to a CEF event anywhere. A good news club, five day club, party club. And so we realized very quickly we need to create some content that would touch their lives to reach their lives. And so we've done that as well. So we do have some of our information on YouTube because that's where kids are to. But we really want to get them on to our unite channel. As much as possible. I think that's so important because it's really about connection for these kids, connecting in the right way to the right message and people and other kids, you know, with and we talked about a little before we started AI chat boxes. Kids are connecting to sources and finding friendship and finding information from sources that might not be the best for them. I mean, are you seeing some of this? Oh, yes. And again, I don't know if your listeners are aware of this, but I wasn't aware of it until I started reading more about the whole AI world and AI girlfriends. AI boyfriends that they can talk to and share. And we're not saying that's not it's not good to talk to someone, but who's creating that content that then answers the child's questions. So that's where we have to as parents, especially as believing parents have to be. Careful to be. Careful that we we know who's creating that content. Plus, we can't live in a, in a imitation world, a fake world. We live in. This world. Exactly. We need relationships with real people, not fake people. Yeah, and there's some scary things happening with the chat bot. Whole world. In fact, there was some recent lawsuits that were brought against some of these creators because of some things that were happening. Kids were getting bad advice, somewhat. A child mentions, hey, I'm thinking about taking my life. I'm losing hope. They the chatbot doesn't know what to do. In that case, they just want to be friend. They want to encourage. So what do they do when someone saying, well, I'm not happy in this life? Well, they want to add some encouragement. So. So I know there was a there was a child that took his life. Yeah. Because of some. You probably saw that. As well. Yeah. Yeah, that's a scary thing. It is to see that that's happening. In fact, some of the developers in AI are now raising that flag and saying, hey, we've got to be careful here. Yeah. We don't know what what the power of this is having on lives of children that haven't been able to discern right from wrong and what's good and what's not so good. And and to really know what direction they should take in some situations. Scary. It is really, really troubling stuff. But but God bless these types of ministries like yours that that really replaces that or connects people to the right kids to the right things. So and it's about hope. Yeah. See, that's the thing. When you realize that suicides continue to rise, it's because children are losing hope. It is. It's hard to. Imagine seeing. Oh, yeah. And isolation. And there's so much there's, there's the, the things that are happening online, the bullying that's happening online. Children are losing hope. They don't think they're valuable anymore when compared to this perfect person over a year that looks like they have everything together in life and and they children need hope and they're losing hope. How do you address that? Jesus is the answer. Yeah. He's the only one that truly gives us hope in a world that's full of chaos. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Fred, how for our listeners, how do they find your ministry and plug into these great resources? Well, the best way is to go. You can Google us, of course, but CEFOnline.com, that's our website. Okay. CEFOnline.com. And if you go there you can read all about CEF, you can explore our resources that we have available. There's articles there that talk about some of the things we've just talked about. You know how how parents can deal with this this AI world and how to. So there's some resources there. Of course, there's devotional books that we've produce. These are devotional books that take a child in depth into the into the reality of what God what's God's message to them. And it uses it. And we use child language. So it's not it's not adult language. It's putting the, I like to say, putting the cookies on the bottom shelf for those children. So we have reader devotionals. We have that mid-range reader devotional so boys and girls can read, you know, for themselves, and parents can help them because often parents say, well, I want to have devotions with my family, with my children, but what do I do? I just read from the Bible and and what do I say? So there's opportunities for parents to use these to really help disciple their own children. Excellent. Excellent. That's great. Well, we will put those or that address in the show notes. So all of our listeners have those. That's great. Fred, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing more about about CEF and in the work you do. God bless. And if we can ever help in any way we would love to do that. But so so grateful you joined us today. Oh, it's been my privilege. Thank you. Oh, great. And again, to our listeners, thanks for joining us. I hope you like this. And please share it and look for us the next, next episode. Take care and God bless.