Thanksgiving Offering

This weekend we will gather our annual world missions offering. By taking up an offering to benefit “others” we express our gratitude to God for all he has done for us. We use to gather it on our anniversary around the middle of April to insure we kept an outward focus, even in our celebration. Last year we chose to move it into the Thanksgiving season. That proved to be a good fit. Where does the offering go?

Our tradition has been to send the first ten thousand dollars to the North American and International Mission Boards. Those two mission agencies support over 10,000 missionaries around the globe. (They also manage most of the mission funds we send them as a percentage of each week’s offerings.) Then with the remainder of the offering each year we have chosen to fund a special project with which we usually have a direct connection. Two years ago we sent $4000 to the Lveasar Orphanage in Cambodia. Last year we sent $7000 to the H204K clean water project in Kenya.

This year’s offering will go to help rebuild a home (yet to be chosen) in Galveston that was destroyed by Hurricane Ike. We’ll have offering envelopes in the program this Sunday for you to use. We plan to couple the gifts we raise with our own sweat equity (manual labor) and do the “rebuild” during Spring Break next March 16-20. So I ask you to pray about what gift you could give this year. It may be a lot, or it may feel like only a little, but together we can do great things. Because we’re always better together!

Greg

Mark two special dates on your calendars:

Baptism this Sunday, November 23rd at 3:00pm. Several people stepped over the line of faith during the Gracefication series.

Christmas Eve-Eve, December 23rd, "Here With Us", Services at 5:00, 6:00 & 7:00pm