Jessica's ready for her book club!

Today we have a special guest post from one of our young readers, Jessica Steggerda. One of our authors, Carolyn Larsen, told us about 10-year-old Jessica’s book club that she created specifically for Carolyn’s book, For Girls Only .

Jessica, who recently celebrated her 11th birthday, wanted to share some of her story with you. You can also visit Jessica at her own blog (just click on her name in the first paragraph). Now let’s hear from Jessica!

During church we learned about something and we were challenged to go home and tell our parents what we learned. If we did that we would get a surprise. I told my parents the story we learned at church and my prize was the For Girls Only book. So, I decided that I should do something with the book. I came up with the idea to have a Bible study. I made an invitation to five girls and sent it to them. We met twice a month.

I prepared for each study, by reading the lesson first.  Then, I made an outline with what we would cover each time.  I took the topics in the book and focused on applying them to our own lives.  We would usually talk about the topics in the book and how we could learn from them, and because we didn’t have much time to meet, we only got to lesson 50.  Each time I would assign them homework to do. The homework would usually be two lessons. If they completed their homework by the next time we met, they would get a prize. Every time we met we would have an open prayer, we would discuss the homework, we would read a lesson together and ask each other questions, we would have a closing prayer, prayer requests, and we would have a snack. We learned a whole bunch but I just loved learning about the importance of telling the truth.  We learned about how cheaters never win and how we always need to live life free of attitude.  We also learned the difference between kind words and hurtful words.

I think God used my book club to open the eyes of other girls to do what I did because it was so much fun and I learned a lot about myself and my friends.

Jessica provided books for everyone.

I really would like to finish this book with the girls in my bible study and continue my bible study. I think after this book I would be able to find a wonderful book to do another bible study with. Of course I will be still using a lot more books by Carolyn Larsen. Currently by myself I am using the One Minute Devotions book by Carolyn.

If other girls would like to start a study I would tell them that it is so much fun and to start off all you have to do is find a great book and invite some friends. Then you can make a plan!

My name is Jessica Steggerda, 11. I was 10 when I started the study. Thank you for having me tell you about my experience!

"For Girls Only" Book Club Girls

Thank you, Jessica, for sharing your story with us!

We hope it will encourage other young readers to start their own book clubs too!

Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.

1 Timothy 4:12 NLT

Do you have a story to share about how you’ve used a Tyndale book for ministry or how a Tyndale book has ministered to you? Please share it with us! You can email your story to bloggers(at)tyndale(dot)com. We may use it in a future blog post!