Missons Sunday 2011

The stage at church on Sunday. Someone else took this picture!

Every year for the past 9 years, our church has had Missions Sunday. It's something that everyone looks forward to every year! On Missions Sunday, we have a special worship time of praise and giving. Earlier in the year, our church sets a goal of money to give so that we can continue to support missions all over the world. Leading up to Missions Sunday, we pray about what God is asking us to give, and we get to see how God is using the funds all over the world!

The worship time started out with a time of celebration and learning about how God has used previous funds to help others. The lesson was about "generation to generation" and how changing a child's life by teaching them about God can eventually change a whole community. We saw videos and pictures of little kids that have been taught the gospel and have told their families and brought them to Christ. Then those families have been an example to their community.

Through out the worship time we saw videos of other ways that God has helped us spread the gospel. There are people in Africa being given corn to grow, so that they can have physical food for them and their community, but they will also be able to share Christ with others as they sell the corn. There are people in the Philippines who are given a goat that provides them with milk and so much. It not only helps their physical needs, but their spiritual needs are met too.

There are so many stories that I could share!

We took the Lord's Supper together and it is amazing to think that we share that with people around the world. No matter what language, race, or culture, we all participate in the same thing every week, remembering what Jesus did for us.

After that, the kids were dismissed to get ready for a special thing we were doing. Grades kinder garden through high school had been practicing a special song. We were given African shirts to wear since the song we sang came from there!

Here is the video they showed as we were getting ready to sing. These are churches around the world that we support.




All the kids lined each isle and there were some on stage. The older kids were paired with a younger kid to make sure they got to the right spot. We sang a song in Swahili I think! Then the church sang a song with us called A New Hallelujah.

Then we took up the special offering and all the kids in the isles helped pass the baskets. The elders then prayed over the offering. Our goal this year was $655,000.

After church there was a free lunch for everyone! We came back for the evening worship where my dad got to announce what we had raised! At the time of evening worship we had raised $649,000 and then by yesterday we had gone over our goal! Praise God!! We had a great time of praise and heard a great lesson from Bart! (who lives in Vienna)

After evening worship there was dessert before dinner and there was ice cream, coke floats, iced coffee and lots of treats! It was a great day!

I am going to also post a video of the kids singing!