Youths pass through teaching pop-up Bible school - WDAM.COM - TV 7 - News, Weather and Sports

Twenty-one kids, picked to ride on a bus, holding pop-up Bible studies in cities across Mississippi for their summer vacation.

"If you're at home all you do is like sit there and watch TV and hang out with your friends," said youth volunteer Patricia Landry. "But this is like the best experience ever because you get to experience like, your faith."

It's the Summer Missionary Institute for Training and Evangelism - or S.M.I.T.E. for short. A Baton-Rouge based program that teaches young people how to teach the gospel. By training them and then putting them on a bus, driving town to town, setting them up to sleep in churches - and sending them out into the community every weekday to teach Bible study to children.

"A backyard Bible club, where we go to the kids and take kind of a one hour miniature vacation bible school to them. They can't come to church so we go to them," said program Director Jerry Parvell.

They're sort of pop-up style, flyers put up in advance, the Bible studies are usually held in apartment complexes or parks, and they're often outside - hopefully in the shade.

"You have to deal with distractions and dogs and kids on bikes and leaf blowers and ice cream trucks and things like that and kids leave or kids just don't come in the first place. Sometimes a club might bomb out and  you switch locations," said youth volunteer Steven Bedwell.