On Orphan Sunday, Christians stand for
children who’ve lost the protection and care of family. We are a people called
to defend the fatherless…to protect the vulnerable…to visit orphans in their
distress.
The seeds of this united Orphan Sunday come especially as a
gift from the church in Africa. While attending a church service in Zambia, an
American visitor was struck by the pastor’s passionate call to care for orphans
in the local community, which had been ravaged by AIDS and poverty. Members of
the church faced deep need themselves. But as the service ended, one after
another stepped forward with money, food and other goods-some even taking off
their own shoes and placing them in the offering for orphans.
The visitor, Gary Schneider, was so
impacted that he began to help Zambian leaders coordinate Orphan Sunday efforts
across Zambia. These efforts spread to the U.S. in 2003.
Orphan Sunday occurs each
year and is an opportunity for Christians and the adoption community to stand
on behalf of children who have been orphaned and become involved in meeting
their needs. Summerdean is joining 2,102
other churches today to pray for and explore ways to help meet the needs of
these kids today.
This year, Summerdean's
Orphan Sunday was held on November 11th. Our guest speaker was Karin Musselman who did an excellent job! She
was able to share with us parts of her adoption and foster care journey over
the last thirty years!
We were also able to share four different
opportunities for the church to help this year!
Our first opportunity is to bless a
local foster or adoptive family. We have
made a bulletin board full of Foster and Adoptive family pictures and hung it in the middle hallway off of the sanctuary on the left hand side. On the back of each picture is the family’s
contact information, their email and a phone number. If you have not done so yet, we would love for you to take a picture and contact
that family and let them know that you are covering them in prayer daily. If you like to cook, plan to take them a meal. If
cooking is not your thing or you just don’t have time for that, maybe you could
give them a gift card to a restaurant or to a grocery store. Maybe you could just send them an encouraging
note every month. Be creative. Think of some ways that you can bless them
over the next year.
Our second opportunity is to pray about
foster care and or adoption. There are
quite a few of us on the project 127 team that would LOVE to sit down and
answer any questions about foster care or adoption that you may have. As you saw from our video earlier, there is
no shortage of need for loving families to step up and welcome a child into
their home for a period or forever.
Our third opportunity is one that you have
hopefully done before! On our video we
explained that God has given us over $82,000 in less than two years! We have just over $17,000 left on our
interest free loan and we just ask that you pray about possibly giving towards
the retirement of that debt. We will
also have Summerdean t-shirts and cups available for sale and all the profits from the sale of those items will go towards the
loan.
Our fourth opportunity is to help some children who attend the Emmanuel Christian School in the DR Congo. One of the needs Papa Paul has brought to my
attention is that there are about 30 orphans from a local orphanage that come
to the primary school each day. Some of
those orphans have been caught stealing food out of the other children’s
bags. They are hungry. We placed thirty jars up on the stage to represent each orphan that
attends the Emmanuel Christian School.
It will cost $2 for one child to have one bottle of water and some food. We asked those in attendance to come forward and find a jar to put $2 worth of change in. We have pictures of these children on the
bulletin board with the adoptive and foster family pictures as well. We would love for you commit to praying for
them daily. If you feel going forward
that God is leading you to give $2 a week so one child can have a bottle of
water and food at school we would love for you to mark your offering envelope with
the word “change” and we will send the money to Papa Paul to purchase
food. We collected a total of $435.46 on Orphan Sunday!
So what’s next?
We have a Holiday Bazaar coming up on
Saturday, December 1st so come do some Christmas shopping and invite
your friends.
Project 127 has been asked to provide the
food for this year’s Christmas dinner here at Summerdean as a fundraiser so
mark your calendars for Sunday December 9th!
We are looking forward to a HUGE party
when God provides us with the remaining $17,000 to pay off our loan for the
training center and Christian school in his perfect timing. We will let you know the date!
And we are praying about our next steps
locally and in the DR Congo. We have
received an estimate to dig a well inside the compound in DR Congo which will
provide the kids there with water and we are praying about whether that’s what
God has next for us.
We are always looking for help on the
project 127 ministry team so if this is something you are interested in, let us
know! We would love to get you plugged
into this ministry! It is hard work but
you get to see up close many of the miracles God is doing each and every day
through this church.
We thank you so much for the opportunity
to speak with you and we look forward to updating you next year and
telling you all the ways we have seen God work in 2019. To God be the glory!
