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You Will be Busy Next Week!

Great news for March so far! Here is an unofficial totals for the Mission Goal giving as of March 14, 2019. Unofficial in that it doesn’t report some of our electronic giving and hasn’t been reconciled by our accountants and Treasurer yet but it’s in the ballpark!

Mite Box

District Mites         $51,751.58   

Thrivent                      $6480.00        

Restricted                   $2785.00

Mite Gifts                 $24538.00

Mite Challenge         $9066.00      

Total:                         $94,620.58       

Total needed officially as of February 28th was $156,821.

This puts us within $62,000! We have until March 29 to receive any contributions towards this 2017-2019 Mission Goal. Remember electronic giving must come in by March 27.

As a reminder of who we are helping, I will be in St. Louis in a week’s time to present checks for several of the mission grants you have funded. You will be with me through your offerings! You will be helping train deaconess students in Liberia. You will be remodeling and updating student quarters at the Sierra Leone Lutheran Seminary. You will be helping put in place a program for high school students to learn how to converse about life issues with their peers. You will be providing funding for an African graduate student to attend Concordia Seminary, St. Louis to return to teach in his home country.

You have a busy week ahead next week! Stay strong and praise the Lord for your work for His Kingdom!

Patti

Lutheran Women in Mission, Missions for God

Coins Go Rolling!

Someone dropped their Mite Box! Coins go rolling around and people scramble to help find them all! It’s another Mite Box Sunday at our church — the first Sunday of every month when we invite the congregation to bring their Mite Box offerings in and add them to the big Mite Box. We then dedicate those offerings to God for spreading of the Gospel message.

It reminded me of the power of those Mite Box collections when they go rolling out of the box. Just this past month we have delivered the first two of our mission grant awards.

One was to Franklin Avenue Mission who sponsors Mercy House for Women and Children in Flint, Michigan to remodel, add on to, and provide a shelter. In Flint 46% of the general population and 66% of the children live below the poverty line. This mission outreach will help unwed, pregnant, abused, homeless Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic mothers and their children.  Can you see those coins rolling out into the community?

The second grant was the grant for Current Missionary Need to support LCMS missionaries overseas. As you know, LCMS missionaries must raise their own money to finance their mission work. The $100,000 grant will provide $10,000 each to assist nine missionaries/missionary families already serving in Kenya, Togo and Ethiopia, Africa; Hong Kong; Peru; and St. Petersburg, Russia, as well as another missionary who has been called to serve in Thailand. Can you see those coins rolling out into the world?

I hope whenever you see a spilled Mite Box you’ll think of those coins spilling out into the world — making a difference in someone’s life for eternity.

Let’s keep those coins rolling!

Patti

 

And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury. And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, “Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all; For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had”  (Luke 21:1–4 KJV).

Check Presentation inside the offices at Mission Central

Check Presentation at Mission Central
LWML Treasurer Marilyn Schroeder presenting the check to the personnel at Mission Central for the grant Current Missionary Need

Check Presentation to Mercy House personnel, pictured outside of Mercy House's facility

Check Presentation to Mercy House
Pictured from left to right: Sue Aussen, Mercy House Program Manager; Michigan District President Susan Gruber, Kaye Wolff, Vice President of Special Focus Ministries; Pastor Bradley Yops, Mercy House Director; MaryBeth Heikkinen, Michigan District Vice President of Communication.

Lutheran Women in Mission

Learning How to Let Go

Sometimes you have to let go! We’ve all faced time of letting go. Letting go of our children as they go to school, from grade school to college and beyond. We have to let go of our family traditions as our families move far away geographically—think of Thanksgiving and Christmas. We have to let go of the idea that our children will want our china and crystal someday! You can add your own.

What does this have to do with my thinking about LWML this week? I have to tell you, if a woman in my congregation came up to me and said she wanted to start an additional LWML group in my church, after I picked myself up off the floor, I would be so excited! If they wanted to meet once a quarter, or have Bible study and collect mites only, or do activities with their small children, I would be so excited! If they wanted to have an LWML as a service group alongside a women’s ministry group already in existence in their church, I would be so excited!

Yet I received two inquiries from women interested in starting LWML groups who met opposition because they are proposing an alternative look for an LWML group. Isn’t that sad. When we “mentor” women in LWML that doesn’t mean we make them do exactly what we have been doing in our LWML group over the years. If we are comfortable in our group and how it operates and when it meets, and don’t want to change, why not encourage formation of another LWML group? They, too, want a group that they are “comfortable” in. Why not try letting go?

I hope you will take it as a mentoring opportunity should some women in your church want something different in their LWML group and are proposing to start one with a different look. Teaching with love and encouragement can be a great example of “serving the Lord with gladness.”

Believing that God has molded each of us individually with love should help us let go. Individual molds means no two are exactly alike. Can’t we let go and let God guide the women to celebrate LWML as it meets their needs? Be a positive mentor. Just think how exciting it would be to have more than one LWML group in all our congregations!

I [Paul] therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift (Ephesians 4:1-7).

Love to you!
Patti

Me and the LWML office staff at a session on, “Effective Mentor-ship”.