Orphan Sunday

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 1^st 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 9^th! 

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!