Participants in the 2017 Mission Andalusia, a youth ministry outreach from First Baptist Church, want to spread the word of God to their family.

According to First Baptist Church youth minister William Worley, “family” is the community of Andalusia.

“I take what Christ said about preaching the gospel to the ends of the Earth, and I don’t think that the ends of the Earth are necessarily in different countries,” Worley said. “I’m not knocking foreign missions, but I believe we can do a lot of mission work right here in our hometown, and I believe that God calls on us to take care of our family first. This is our family, I believe Andalusia is our family and God calls on us to care for them first and foremost.”

Mission Andalusia spent time this week with children at West Haven and Pineview Apartments. They also will be there today.

The youth play games with the children and build crafts, and when they sit down for a snack they tell Bible stories.

“We do this like a Vacation Bible School for the kids here,” Worley said. “We want to bring church to them since a lot of them don’t have the chance to come to church sometimes.”

Worley said that he likes to ask the kids questions to keep them involved in the Bible stories. Thursday’s story was about the second coming of Jesus and Worley tied that into zombies with the dead rising from the ground.

“Ask them questions like that and the more questions you ask them the more likely they are to stay engaged,” he said.

Mission Andalusia will be visiting with the youth again, from 9:45 a.m. until 11:15 a.m., at both West Haven and Pineview today.