Lottie Moon Christmas Offering

December 1st-8th is the Week of Prayer for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering

Please join us as we gather together each day to pray for missionaries that are serving in the mission fields. Prayer schedule is:

Monday-Saturday, December 2nd-7th - 6:00-8:00 a.m. and 5:00-7:00 p.m.
in the VMBC Library.

Lottie Moon was 32 and single when she set sail on her first missionary journey to China. Unlike most women of Lottie’s time, she was highly educated. She was part of the first small class of Southern women to receive a university-level Master of Arts degree.

Lottie spent 39 years serving in China. The work she did was anything but glamorous. She learned
the language, the culture, the customs, and the dress so she could fit in and minister to the Chinese
people. Her life was not easy. She wrote numerous letters to the then Foreign Mission Board urging
them to send more missionaries.

She battled loneliness and spent countless hours nursing other missionaries whose health had failed.
While her furloughs back home were needed to allow her body time to rest, her heart remained in
China. In 1912, Lottie Moon died on Christmas Eve while on a ship headed to the United States. She
starved herself because she could not eat while the Chinese people she loved so dearly had no food.

Lottie’s letters from the mission field prompted the first offering collection for overseas missions in
1888. The collection totaled $3,315, enough to send three women to China. Since then over $3 billion
has been given through the LMCO. Receipts for 2009 were $148.9 million and the goal for 2010 is $175 million. These funds, which make up 55% of the IMB’s total income, make it possible for over 5,300 missionaries to serve and share Jesus with others in remote and often dangerous parts of the world.

Prayer Walk in Patagonia, AZ

The Village Meadows Baptist Church Missions team invited the entire church to join them on a prayer walk through Patagonia.  Thirteen people joined together for the activity.  The prayer walk took place on Sunday, November 3, 2013, and was announced via the Sunday bulletin and Pastor Mark.  Participants, who met in the church parking lot after the second service, were offered the choice to ride in the church van or take their own vehicles.  Upon arriving at Patagonia we enjoyed fellowship over lunch and then broke up into two groups.

The Patagonia of South America is located near Argentina and Chile.  The ancient Patagonians were thought to be giants due to the fact that they were taller than the Europeans that “discovered” them in 1520.

Present day Patagonia, Arizona, also has “giants,” not in the form of tall people, but in Spiritual warfare.  The giants that one encounters today include New Age thinking.  One web site that embraces New Age thinking, offers retreats wherein participants have the opportunity to “activate almost all the Portals to Liberation.”  Huh?!

If you have never been on a prayer walk, you have missed out on a time of Spiritual focus and a heartfelt desire to bring the lost to our Redeemer King.  Each group slowly and prayerfully walks down the streets praying for the children we see, the occupants of the houses and for the entire town.  Each person prays silently and every so often we gather as a group to pray aloud.  At a designated time, the groups convene and begin the journey home.  On this particular visit to Patagonia, we returned to Sierra Vista at approximately 5:00 PM.

I encourage you to join us when the next prayer walk is offered.  You not only will be going forth with other members of the church, but, because where two or more are gathered in His name, you also will be walking with Jesus as we lift His name on behalf of a community that desperately needs Him.  An added bonus, as if walking with Jesus is not enough, your own Spiritual life will grow and deepen.  Come join us!