Thursday, July 19, 2012

VBS Children Give Above and Beyond

" Each one must give as he has decided in his heart . . . for God loves a cheerful giver" 
2 Corinthians 9:7



Last week during VBS many children and their families cheerfully gave to those in need. Each day the children were challenged to bring an item to help local ministries and trips going across the world.  They supplied boxed items for The Well, baseballs for children in East Asia, Shampoo for MMDR/Haiti, and sheets for East Africa.  They also raised over 500 lbs. of change that will be given for missions this year! How amazing to see children cheerfully give above and beyond!




Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Heart Of A Servant

 
Here is an update from Stephen Murray who will be serving in East Africa one month:

Awesome day today. Started off giving my host families boys a cinnamon roll from the restaurant last night, which they were psyched about. The boys were also watching teenager mutant ninja turtles this morning which was great.

When we got to the village I got to lead worship with our translator who happens to be a very talented musician. It is great to find such great friendships and connections over here.
We then moved on to another house visit thence and whereupon I successfully carried a 50 kilo bag of Taft to it's final destination. Success!!! We spent a good while on the visit. One mother insisted on giving us a coffee ceremony which is a great honor. People here show their appreciation in the most beautiful ways. When you visit their house they insist on sitting lower than you. The guards at the guest house clean your shoes of the mud from the day purely out of respect and the desire to serve. I pray that I learn how to serve while I am here.
We also visited the alert hospital so the team could go shopping. Please keep us all in your prayers as we continue to minister to these children and the missionary families. Pray that God will present us with opportunities to influence the children of the village and pray we will take every opportunity he gives. Pray that we will do our duty in serving these long term workers, and pray we will always give God the glory.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Project 61 Medical Update

  
Let me begin by introducing myself – my name is Emily and I am the volunteer RN with Project 61. This July will mark one year since I moved here. I am so excited to have the opportunity to share with you all about what God is doing in East Africa and in the lives of the people, specifically with health and medical needs. When I came here one year ago, ibuprofen, amoxicillin, and band-aids was about the extent of medical supplies. I began treating children and families with what we had, but more often had to take them to the hospital because of my limited resources. In October 2011, we a medical team served for 10 days and at the boarding schools. They brought an abundance of medical resources. These donations became the base for starting our “Project 61/Great Hope Ministries Clinic” on our compound. I began seeing patients in the clinic and traveling to the boarding schools once or twice a month to care for the students. Since I’ve been here, I have seen a variety of different illnesses, diseases, and injuries amongst the people. Some of the most common being: respiratory infections, urinary infections, skin infections, allergies, hearing loss, sport related injuries, burn injuries, heartburn, and parasites. Keep in mind that I am a new graduate and have no doctors, assistants, or other help when it comes to medical care for our program. The clinic continues to expand. Donations have been pouring in and I am so grateful for that. The line at the clinic door is at least 10 people long when I arrive in the village for the day. And I am excited to share that we are doing construction for a new clinic that will be nearly five times as large and have plenty of space to store the medical supplies and see patients.  Last month, we had a medical team of 20 people serve with us. They treated all the children in our program and saw an additional 400 patients from the village community. This only scratches the surface of a “Project 61 medical update” and I look forward to sharing with you much more over the months. I am reminded of the verse Jeremiah 30:17 which says “For I will restore health to you and heal you of your wounds”. One thing that I love about my job is that I continually see God’s healing hand at work here in East Africa. I am excited to be able to share some of the stories with you. If you would like to make donations for medical needs, please contact me directly at emily.cornish@61.org. Please pray for all the children as they are home from school for the summer. Several students will be undergoing minor surgeries and many having follow-up doctor visits.


Tuesday, July 3, 2012

A Life of Missions


 By Branden

Where We’ve Been
As young children we are asked, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” That question comes with many responses, but we can say we have loved where God has taken us over the past five years and how He articulated our stories. As we try to get our bearings, during these last two weeks we’ve been home we have had some time to reflect on where we have been. As you know the English Center in Central Asia is fully functioning and operating for what it was designed to be. But the last week in May and the first week in June were a perfect culmination of our time in Central Asia.


A church from Michigan that visited last November wanted to plan a trip to come back in the spring.  The spring turned into early summer and their trip was going to land the last two weeks of our time in the country. Our first response was to try and get them to come earlier because we thought that a two week project was too much for us to handle seeing that we would have only three days to get our family and things together to head to the States. But we decided to yield our desires for this time to the Lord and do all we could to make this last project one of the best. We set out to have two English camps, one per week, and on the last two days of each week we would take thirty students to a local lake where we would have spiritual classes in English with the goal that each member of our team and the Michigan team would be responsible for sharing their faith with the people they invited. Without a doubt it was the peak of our time there; within a two weeks period sixty students heard the gospel and Annie had the chance to see one of her closest friends profess that Jesus as Lord and the only way to heaven! When we returned from the lake she presented the three girls she shared with on the trip each with their own Bible. Words cannot describe their faces and their excitement to have a Bible in their own language! Not only that, but looking back over the last two years Annie and I personally shared the Gospel with around 250 students. Although the soil seems hard, in that we only saw three of those make decisions to accept Christ, we are continuing to pray for these seeds that were planted. Studies say it takes a Muslim thirty times to hear the gospel before they accept Christ as their Lord. We believe God is still calling some of these students into the family and in time we will see their faces again.



Where We are Going
We have been shocked that many peoples’ first question has been, “So, are you done?” Our response is, “Are we ever done?” Even though we are finishing up our long term living in Central Asia, our focus is still reaching the lost.  For the last six months we have been praying about where God is leading us. As we mentioned Annie needs to continue her nursing for her license, but we want to carry on in this life of missions. Over the course of the last three months God has been showing us exactly what that will look like. He is leading us to continue to work with college students here in the States, where many of their lives are just as lost as those in other parts of the world. More specifically He is leading us to build a camp for college students. Branden is planning to stay on staff and will continue to raise support for this ministry and find partners that want to continue to see lives changed. We will be contacting you soon to see if you will continue supporting the work of reaching these students.  Also, we want to say we have had some struggles. It seems that some of our support is falling off quickly. We are not sure why. We hope that you feel like we have fulfilled our role. Our support is our only source of income and living here in the States is three times more expensive than Central Asia.  We would like to ask if your giving has to change would you please consider our needs and our position. We love you dearly and very grateful you have helped carry us this far. We look forward to catching up with you.