Unique Ways of Mission Giving

We have a supporting church in Hawaii. (Sorry you other missionaries--it is rough work visiting on furlough, but one of us has to do it!) Anyway, a sweet family in the church put a jar on the table and had the kids put change into it all year. They filled the jar and sent a generous Christmas offering to us. What a blessing!

Another blessing is when churches put together a special box of goodies from the homeland and send it. Some churches do this for Christmas, but we have a friend who visited Japan last year who now sends boxes like that several times a year. What a blessing it is to get that American candy, flavored decaf coffee, grits, etc., that we can't get over here!:thumbs: :thumbs:

 

ktn4eg, if they did have grits here, be assured they would find a way to put raw fish on it! :laugh:

 

Root beer in Japan!

:laugh: :laugh:

Oh, man, don't you know God frowns on cruelty to missionaries?? I haven't had an RC and Moon Pie for ages! I'd be bereft if I couldn't get a Mountain Dew once in awhile. 'Member the commercials when Mountain Dew first came out? "Yahoo, Mountain Dew!"

I'm reminded of the most special gifts ever sent over to a bereft Tennessee missionary. We hadn't been over here but a few months when I complained to my best friend back in Tennessee that I couldn't get root beer anywhere. God bless 'im! He sent a whole box of root beer over. I got the note from the P. O. to come pick it up, and my poor heart was all a flutter.

Now the problem was that the Japanese culture, as rich as it is, has no knowledge whatever of root beer. So at the P. O. they slapped an alcohol surcharge on my box of root beer. And I had just started language study--certainly didn't know enough to explain root beer to a stern customs man! So now I had a moral dilemma. Do I pay alcohol tax for root beer, or do I refuse the shipment? More importantly, would my supporting churches ever find out??? Did I pay the tax and take the root beer? You'll never know! (Man was it good, though!).:thumbs:

Several years later we had graduated from language school and moved to Yokohama to start our first church. My mom, bless her Texan soul, had sent over some little bottles of root beer extract. All you had to do was add water and yeast, seal the bottles and wait. We had some missionary friends come down from our previous town for a meal, and I thought I would give them a treat--home made root beer!

Wouldn't you know it, they didn't appreciate my Mom's gift and all that hard work I did to make it up. None of them would drink it, due to the yeasty taste and smell. Why I even had to show them an encyclopedia article on fermentation and explain how just having yeast in it didn't make my root beer into real beer! Shucks, as it turned out I had to drink all the root beer myself! (Man was it good, though!).raise:

 

Being in Sri Lanka, you can not get anything. If you can find it, it costs an arm and a leg. We get packages from many churches thorughout the year. This last time, one sent mt wife new pots and pans, the kids baseball gloves and me, flavoured coffee creamer. What a blessing.
Our oldest son who is now 15, just had surgery and one church outof love, sent an offering to cover the surgery. It is amazing, God is so good. The best thing about the packages and extra offerings, is that our kids see the love of Gods people and it encourages them. It always seems that cards that are sent to us, come at the right time.

One compliant being over here, NO DR. PEPPER!!

 

Hi, USMC71! Welcome to the BB from a fellow IFB missionary in Asia. I hope we can fellowship a lot on this Missions/Evangelism forum.

Sri Lanka sounds like Japan when we first got here 25 years ago. It gradually got better, though. Patty and I remember clearly when American beef was first allowed here and we could actually eat a steak once in awhile--Japanese beef was incredibly expensive. Hey, even Dr. Pepper eventually got here, so there is hope for you guys!

I know what you mean about your kids being encouraged by those packages. God knows just exactly what we need, amen?

 

During Vacation Bible School the kids compete with each other in teams to perform various tasks, including memorization, artwork, attendance and such.

Each day the kids also bring their change, which is counted and tallied for each team.
Day two is penny day;
Day three is nickel day;
Day four is dime day, etc...

We go Wednesday to Wednesday; by the last day we are at dollar day.

We raise about $3 thousand for the sponsored missionary (who is invited to attend and participate in the event). THAT'S A LOT OF COINS!!!

My kid's are all grown up now, but I still save my change to give to a kid that forgot to bring some.

Each year I have fond memories of helping kids gather their coins after their paper bag breaks in the parking lot.... sometimes throwing in a few extra from my pocket to help thier team win. :thumbs:

Rob

 

Wow Deacon, that IS alot of money! It must be such a blessing to give all of that to the visiting missionary/evangelist!

We have gone about raising money for some missionaries to India by having 2 or 3 different kids dress up in clothes from India and stand by the front doors of the auditorium at the end of services, holding empty water jars, or some other vessel that looks like something from India. Then those going out the doors put their extra change in the jars after the services. We raised a good amount that way.

 

My home church has something similar to the penny offering to help support missions.

Once a month they collect a special Penny-A-Pound offering, where they ask you to pay a penny for every pound you are and that money goes to missions that the church supports.

Jamie

 

That would be a weighty means of giving in many Baptist churches.
Not sure if the pastors or deacons could brag how good their diets are working though.

**********
If I might share a method that has had grave consequences in our church.

We have quite a few home-grown missionaries.

To encourage them the church sponsored them for a good amount and we asked each individual to consider supporting them on their own as well.

In some cases more than 1/2 of their support was covered by our church and its members.
...and we are not a particularly large church.

The upside: It significantly decreased the time it took of each of the missionaries to reach the field.
AND it allowed the missionaries, who had only a few churches supporting them to spend a significant amount of time in each church when they returned home.

The downside: We live in a mobile culture; people relocate, some change churches.
Quite often they "forget" to fullfil their promises.
After a few terms the missionaries became severely under supported.
Our church initially stepped in to fill the void but various financial and membership problems made it impossible.

No missionary has had to be called back (yet) but to this day many of our missionaries are under-funded.

This summer we will have a missionary homecoming, a multi-week event with many of our missionaries attending.

I fear at least one may not return to the field after decades serving in PNG. :tear:

Rob

 

These have been great! :thumbs:

Deacon, I was blessed reading about your church and its burden for world missions. They have tried hard and done much good.

Of course I truly hope that the PNG missionaries do not have to leave the field. And hopefully the other missionaries will hit the deputation road and raise more support.

 

The Support that Never Came

Dr. and Mrs. Charles Hurlburt were cousins of my mother, and thus members of the extended Rice Clan, which included the three Rice evangelists (Joe, John and Bill) and their families. I remember a visit from them to our home in Wisconsin when I was a teen ager. They were sweet and good Christians.

On our furlough in 1993, we got a lovely Christmas card from the Hurlburts which said, "Dear John and Patty, We have enjoyed gettilng your prayer letters through the years. We know you are excited to be back in the States this Christmas. We hope this will be a wonderful time for you all. Please write and let us know how your support is coming along. We are interested. Your cousins in Oklahoma, Charles and Jean Hurlburt."

They included a picture from their recent Holy Land trip. On the back they had written, "Dear John and Patty, The highlight of this year was our trip to Israel in May with a group from our church. Here we are standing just outside the Garden of Gethsemane, just a short distance from the Eastern Wall of Jerusalem. About seven of the old olive trees, twisted with age, have survived through hundreds of years. Merry Christmas! Charles and Jean Hurlburt."

In January of 1995 we received a letter dated January 1 from the mission board from the Hurlburts from their home in Oklahoma City. They wrote, "Dear Sirs, We would like to take $25.00 a month support for John and Patty Himes working under your mission in Japan. Will you please let them know about this added support and also send us any information that we should have from your mission. Thank you. Sincerely, Jean Hurlburt."

On April 19 of that year, Dr. and Mrs. Hurlburt went down to the Social Security office at the downtown government building. They were in the building when Timothy McVeigh set off his truck bomb outside. Dr. and Mrs. Hurlburt went straight to Heaven! Their bodies were among the last found, I believe.

I have often thought of the Hurlburts. There they were, walking with God, serving Him faithfully. Their first big decision of 1995 was to begin supporting us missionaries way over here in Japan so that we could win some precious Japanese to the Savior! They were already so close to Heaven, God just said, "Come on up, Charles and Jean. I have a special place for you. Well done, good and faithful servants. Enter into the joy of your Lord."
:saint: :saint:

 

Beef!

Hope we can do some fellowship, too. NO beef for me over here. When you see the cattle grazing on plastic and garbage on the side of the road, it kind of ruins it for you. We can get imported beef from Australia, but it is far too expensive. We did jusy get Peanut M&M's,!! Glory!! We have Coke, Mc Donald's, KFC, Domino's and Pizza Hut. But, nothing replaces a good ole Chicken Fried Steak, fried Okra, Mashes taters and chicken gravy, oh, by the way, a moon pie

25 years in Japan, God bless you brother. My wife is half Japanese. She is really wanting to make it back to Okinawa before her Oba San dies, she is 94, I think. But, our furlough is scheduled for 2007, we will see.

 

At our VBS (which we are in the middle of right now), we have an offering challenge betwen the boys and girls - by weight. I have a set of home-made scales with buckets on each end. We collect the offering each evening, put it in the buckets, and the one that weighs the most wins. There is MUCH screaming and yelling at this point. Since we have way more girls than boys, the girls usually win the first two days, then the men who are helping begin to bring the rolled pennies in. In our small church, we have raised over $600 (mostly pennies!). Our VBS offering goes to support a local children's home.

The reward for the winner: they get to throw water balloons at the preacher (me, and I don't mind at all). Well, all the kids get in on the fun!

 

Sounds like a blast! Praise the Lord for what you've raised. :thumbs:

 

i don't know if this is the kind of "mission giving" this thread is referring to but here goes.

Recently, our church has been helping a wonderful blood-bought IFB church in Thailand. They are refugees. So we did a collection of used clothes and we collected so much. We also got some shoes, bags, cloths, ... children's clothes were especially needful. Folks have so much stuff that's too good to throw away but feel it's too old or outdated to be used. So we were doing them a favour by helping them clear the cupboards and put their stuff back into "circulation".

But the best part is, the best kind of missions giving is going yourself and giving yourself in the mission field. A group of around 20 made a trip up to the village in Thailand and brought the clothes up along with them. (Used up all the baggage limit.) And they ran a mini VBS for the church there. :thumbs:

I didn't get to go this time round but they all came home renewed in their spirit and zeal for serving the Lord.

 

Wonderful, Su Wei! :thumbs: :applause: