Feed My Starving Children

A great opportunity for local volunteering is coming up at our church this summer.

On June 5-6, we are hosting a Mobile Packing Day at the church (actually at CCA) where we will be packing 100,000 meals for children all over the world in a day and a half. We need at least 500 volunteers to be able to do it!

The meals are packets engineered specifically for malnourished children, and only cost 17 cents per meal. They contain rice, soy protein, dehydrated vegetables, and vitamin-fortified chicken flavoring. I have tasted the mixture once it's cooked up, it tastes a lot like Rice-A-Roni.

For more information about the organization that we are teaming with for this, go to www.fmsc.org. All of their meals are packed by volunteers.

Volunteers will work in manageable, two-hour shifts, with one shift on Friday from 6-8, and 6 shifts on Saturday, every two hours from 8am-8pm. If we fill up, more shifts may be added earlier Friday.

Kids and youth are more than welcome. Donations are also welcome, as we will be covering the cost of the meals ($17,000), but are not required.

If you would like to sign up to come pack meals with us, send a donation, or receive more information, email me (Abbey) at fmscdallas@gmail.com. Let me know your name, the best way to contact you (either email address or phone number), and which shift you would like to work.

Cambodia and Nigeria

There will be a trip going to Cambodia this fall (2009). This will be a much smaller trip to scope out and begin to pray for the trip that will go in 2010, which will be larger, youth-friendly, and will have a medical focus. The trip this year will not be open to youth, primarily because it will require two weeks and be during the school year. We hope to have some of our own Cambodian congregation come along.

The Grigsbys would like to lead another trip to Nigeria in November of this year, exact dates to be announced. It will likely be a two-week trip, but it won't be a big deal to have someone come late or leave early, I guess they'll be close to an airport. If anyone is interested in this trip, contact me and I'll get you in touch with Scott Grigsby.

Trips; Kenya, El Paso

Some more information about a couple more trips we will (likely) be taking this year:

Some of you are aware that our church took a group to Kenya last summer; I have posted notes from several people who went on that trip on this blog. Another trip is in the works for this year, but dates and details are not finalized just yet as they wait to hear from a doctor that they hope to take along.

Lois Evans would like to take a group from our church to El Paso for a senior-friendly mission trip. This trip is designed to keep travel stresses and costs to a minimum. Participants will stay in host homes and will collaborate with a network of homeless shelters in the downtown El Paso area to do volunteer work suitable for any physical condition. Cost will likely be around $350-$400. This trip will be in late September or October, but these dates are not finalized yet either.

Both of these trips are still in planning stages, please be sure to check back here regularly for more details as they come together if you are interested in going.

Gospel for Asia Update

December, 2008

Jorhat, Assam
INDIA

Dear sponsors,

Greetings to you in the matchless name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I would like to convey my heartfelt thanks to you for your precious prayers and financial support for my ministry. Please continue to remember me in your prayer. I too remember you in my prayer. May the good Lord bless you abundantly.

In the last six months of my ministry the Lord blessed me and helped me to reach many villages with the message of the love of God. Also the Lord granted me sound health and guided me in His way in the ministry. I thank God for all his blessings that the Lord has enabled me to experience.

At present I am serving the Lord as a pastor and evangelist at Aantimuria. In this area most of the people are non-Christians. These people are economically very poor. But they are giving good response to the Gospel. The Lord is using us very effectively among these people. Please pray for these people and their salvation.

As a church every day we are involving in different activities like outreach ministry, Gospel preaching, house visitation, hospital visitation, door-to-door evangelism and personal evangelism. Through our ministry many people received the Lord as their personal Savior, and they were added into the church. Please continue to pray for my ministry.

During the last six months of my ministry the Lord enabled me to distribute 200 Gospel tracts and 10 New Testaments. As a result of my ministry five people received the Lord as their personal Savior and received water baptism.

Pray for my church believers that they would stand firm in their faith in Christ.

Pray for me in my ministry so that I may be able to do the ministry effectively.

In Christ,

Anadh Kutum

SKG/KS

A couple more trips

There will be a hurricane relief trip for Hurricane Ike on April 1-5. They will stay in Texas City and work in Galveston, similar to the trip they took to New Orleans last year. I believe this year women can come too, as the housing situation is different. The cost for that trip is likely to be $150-200. The purpose of the trip is, I believe, demolition of houses that were destroyed in the hurricane.

A trip is planned this summer for Aurich, Germany, where a team went last year. They will stay in homes and do a baseball camp. It will be July 24-August 2. The cost of the trip will be just a little over transportation costs, including the flight from Dallas and a train ride.

I have added a little bit of information about myself (Abbey Daniels) and my email to the "About me" section to the right. Another way to contact me with questions is just to comment on the particular blog post, I get those in email form as well.

I'M BACK... I promise.

It has been requested that I post information regarding the trips that we have on schedule for this year. So I will oblige, but a few at a time so they can be searched via tags.

First of all, a group of 10 or 11 from our church will be going to East Asia March 13-22. Three or 4 people on that trip will be on their first ever overseas mission trip, so pray for that group! See Ellen Childress or ask me about more information, although I think it's full.

Over the same week, a group will be going to Quito, Ecuador. They will be working with an organization called Extreme Response there that 5 of us from FUMC worked with in December. See Sharon Roelke for more information about that one, or ask me!

Check back for more info, I'm going to start being more regular about posting on here. Holidays are nuts.

Testimony from Joseph McWilliams, Kenya Trip

God guided every part of me going on this trip to Africa. Everything from my summer school starting no later than a day after I got back to the fact that our entire group never got in one quarrel. Not to mention I didn't even bump my head once! After some experiences I have had on mission trips, this was such a blessing. I will never be the same because of my trip to Kenya. One day we visited an orphanage that took in kids that are anywhere from newborns to three years old. While we were there it was hard to grasp the fact that they had no parents. I'm so used to seeing babies with the parents running behind them. It wasn't until I came home and read this verse that it really hit me:

Ecclesiastes 4:1
Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the
sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed- and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors- and they have no comforter.

So many nights I see the faces of those oppressed orphans and wish there was something I could do. I have been praying that someday there will be. While we were there Leah and I took many pictures and video. She really did a great job and I'm very thankful she was there to help me. I couldn't have done it without her. I'm very excited about the opportunities that God provided me with. I talked to Bob and Ann, the leaders of Bridges International, and figured out they had been looking for somebody to help them with the website. Again, God had a strong hand here. I agreed to help without hesitation. I have been working on a site for them with the pictures we took there. I'll also be making a video to show at church and put on the website I'm making. Please pray for me as I try to balance school, work, and my involvement with these amazing people. I hope to have the video done sometime in August.

When I got to my dorm at West Texas A&M my parents were trying to make me comfortable (after all, I had just flown in from Africa). I tried to explain to them that I was thankful just to have a bed to sleep in and a pillow to lay my head on. I realized how many creature comforts I really do have. The beautiful thing is that, despite having very different daily routines, the Kenyans are the kindest people I've ever met. The collectivistic culture completely captivated me as it harshly contrasted with our culture. I've had trouble adjusting back to America. All I can do is pray that God will send me back to Kenya some day.

Joseph McWilliams