Thank you for the gifts you give throughout the year for our overseas mission partners.
Here are letters of thanks and updates from the projects we have supported in our last two Christmas Gift Days.
Christmas Gift Day 2015 – Hope for Girls Mulchera; Maharashtra, India
“This gift is a huge blessing. I’ve been praying for this project for ages. Your gift will change the lives of the children and the support staff there. I am so thankful to your church for your generosity toward these underprivileged children. May God continue to bless you all manifold. Please uphold us in your prayers. Today I heard more good news from this area – our staff went to dig the bore well for water and hit the water at just 65 feet, which is almost unbelievable. We are using funds from ‘Clear Blue’ for the water project. I know the LORD has some plan for this place because He has connected us to these children. Please convey our sincere gratitude to all the congregation at Fulwood.”
Shirish Ahaley—Dyanand Foundation
Christmas 2014 – Udgir Church Property, Maharashtra, India
Greetings! Today, 27th Nov 2015, the Udgir property documents were completed and transferred to the Western India Conference of the Free Methodist Church. This is a wonderful answer after 9 years of prayer. God is good and His faithfulness endures forever. Thank you for your prayers and sacrifices to raise the money. I very grateful to you, along with Udgir Church and Day Care Children. The children were tired of changing their meeting place every 11 months – now they have found a shelter. No one will remove them from this property. The church and ministry will grow. Today a 17-year-old girl possessed with a demon came to the pastor’s house. She was violent but she received deliverance in the name of Jesus. All glory to God.”
Moses Awarde — Superintendent Western India Conference
Dave Brown on behalf of the Gobal Partnerships Ministry Team
‘Transformed Life’ is a new venture for the Whole Church in 2016. Will you be part of it? Through studying the Book of Ephesians 1-3 we will look at answering 3 of life’s key questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? What am I living for? We will do this through Sunday Morning Talks, Action Steps, Memory Verses, Home Group Studies and Daily Devotional Readings. Our Children’s and Youth Programme will also be following the same series in Energize and Ignite and in Youth Home Groups.
We encourage you all to be part of Transformed Life and see what God can do in all of us.
FIVE HOT TOPICS – FIVE EVENINGS
We live in an ever-changing world which presents us each day with a host of moral and lifestyle choices. How do we live out our faith in a society where others are equally sure of theirs? How can we be distinctive without being weird? What about the occult? How do we live in a “material world” without getting lost in technology and the consumer society?
Join us for this 5 week Talks Series as we find answers in a book written over 2000 years ago!
When I recently prepared a display for Big Prayer Tuesday showing FFMC’s most recent involvement in mission I was amazed at the places people had visited and the work in which they had been involved. On a full time basis there is Sheila Etherington in Rwanda, Janet Chapman with Overseas Missionary Fellowship, and Savannah Da Silva Watkins with Operation Mobilisation.
People have been visiting Rwanda regularly, working with staff and students at the hospital as well as Kibogora Polytechnic, where they teach, preach, lecture and share their various areas of expertise. In 2014 a VISA team from our church visited Kibogora, an experience which left team members changed and challenged.
Individuals have visited Austria, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Madagascar, Rwanda, South Africa, Togo, Uganda, where they were involved in children’s work, youth training programmes, healthcare, sports outreach and reaching out to the Roma Gypsy people and their growing church.
In 2016 a VISA team will go to Quito, Ecuador to serve with Pan de Vida, a Christian group working with people with economic, educational and spiritual needs.
But who are these amazing people? Quite simply, they people just like you: adults, teens, OAPs, single, married – ready to use whatever talents they have to serve others and share in the church’s mission to preach the gospel.
So what about you? Is God calling you to step out to try something new and challenging during 2016? The Global Partnership team are here to help. Between us we have experience of long and short-term mission. We’d love to provide you with advice and encouragement.
If you are already planning an overseas venture, please let us know so we can support you, and ensure that the church is informed and praying for you.
In September Dan Feeny highlighted the issues of human trafficking and modern day slavery – you can read more about this in Heart magazine. One country where trafficking happens is India; our partners at the Mumbai Free Methodist Church run projects to educate, protect and rescue children from exploitation. ‘Hope for Girls’ in Mulchera, Maharashtra, is a new venture for the church’s outreach arm called ‘The Dyanand Foundation’.
The Foundation works with a group of 150 girls living in a village about 300 miles from Mumbai. These girls will receive education and learn new skills without which they will be married as teenagers to older men, or trafficked into Mumbai to work in dreadful circumstances. The Foundation has secured funds from the Clear Blue Global Water project so clean water from new bore holes is now available in the village. The Foundation is also working with Free Methodist Child Care Ministries to gain long-term support for these girls.
Our gifts this Christmas day will provide clothes, school materials, health check-ups, education on trafficking, buffalos for milk and a fishery project. A project coordinator/evangelist will be employed to work in the village for the year. It will also fund weekends away when the girls will attend camps where the good news of Jesus is shared with them and they will learn more about the Christian faith.
The Foundation’s prayer is that the village will soon see a significant number of people becoming Christians as a result of this project. Our aim is to raise £6,300 on Christmas Day to support this project (£37 for each girl) to enable the Foundation to make real progress. Thank you for all your gifts over the past years on our Christmas Gift Day which have made a significant difference in advancing the Kingdom of God in India.
We’ve put together a YouTube playlist and a Spotify playlist of some of the songs that we use in our worship at Fulwood Free Methodist Church so that you can enjoy the songs throughout the week.
‘Do everything without grumbling or arguing,’ wrote Paul. But how can we resist when the media off ers us so much juicy grumble-fodder?
We moan about the government, education, immigration, or recently, having to boil or buy water. On p6, Margaret Sutton remembers life without indoor running water or electricity. Her life has not been without tragedy, yet her attitude has always been, not grumbling, but thankful and quietly prayerful.
Don’t Worry
‘Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.’ It’s that guy Paul talking again! But what if we’re in huge debt or about to lose our home? There are no easy answers, but worry won’t help. Read p4, about people who are thankful for the new Preston North CAP Debt Centre. This initiative is dramatically changing the lives of local people struggling with debt.
Leaving home comforts
The world is not TV – you can’t simply sit on your sofa with a remote control to change the scenes you hate. You might consider emulating two of our younger church members, who left their home comforts to make a difference: Jeni Sutton on p2 spent her summer in South Africa supporting children suffering poverty and injustice. And Dan Feeny on p10, decided to highlight the problem of human trafficking by living in a cage for a week.
Living in peace
Ultimately, it is not what we do, but who we are that makes the real difference. My aim is to be less ‘grumbly’ and more thankful, to worry less and pray more, to be less critical of others and, as far as it depends on me, to live in peace with everyone.
PS: Our Sunday morning service no longer starts at 10am. So that we have space for everyone, two identical services happen, starting at 9.15am and at 11am. See the back cover for details. And it goes without saying; whoever you are you are welcome to join with us.
“This gift is a huge blessing. I’ve been praying for this project for ages. Your gift will change the lives of the children and the support staff there. I am so thankful to your church for your generosity toward these underprivileged children. May God continue to bless you all manifold. Please uphold us in your prayers. Today I heard more good news from this area – our staff went to dig the bore well for water and hit the water at just 65 feet, which is almost unbelievable. We are using funds from ‘Clear Blue’ for the water project. I know the LORD has some plan for this place because He has connected us to these children. Please convey our sincere gratitude to all the congregation at Fulwood.”
Greetings! Today, 27th Nov 2015, the Udgir property documents were completed and transferred to the Western India Conference of the Free Methodist Church. This is a wonderful answer after 9 years of prayer. God is good and His faithfulness endures forever. Thank you for your prayers and sacrifices to raise the money. I very grateful to you, along with Udgir Church and Day Care Children. The children were tired of changing their meeting place every 11 months – now they have found a shelter. No one will remove them from this property. The church and ministry will grow. Today a 17-year-old girl possessed with a demon came to the pastor’s house. She was violent but she received deliverance in the name of Jesus. All glory to God.”
