Cake Auction!

Mission Action Team Cake Auction

Friday, March 28th

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Location:

Village Meadows Baptist Church

1407 El Camino Real

*  Bake a cake, cupcakes, muffins, cookies, or pies

* Bid on a delicious dessert to take home

* Enjoy the music of  the “No Chicken Wire Band”

* Come and enjoy the fellowship!

  

OPERATION: "MISSION POSSIBLE"

Now that the pumpkin pie has successfully destroyed my diet and the Christmas ham is safely tucked into the last casserole of the holiday, my thoughts dwell on the details of the season. Although I realize that I am not alone when I say the holidays went entirely too quickly, I wonder just how much of the flurry of activity was in celebration of my Lord’s birth and not in celebration of my own self interests. Keeping this in mind, I admit the latter and strive to do a better job in the coming year. I know that it is my responsibility and a command to do everything I can to promote and lift up the name of Jesus not only during the Christmas season but all year round. One of my favorite parables, the parable of the talents, bears witness to just these sentiments.

According to Matthew 25:14-30 we are likened to one of the three slaves entrusted with much and expected to increase what we have been given to honor and glorify the master. Some of us keep what we have whether it be tangible or intangible out of insecurity, and in doing so, Jesus warns, it “shall be taken away,” while those who show faith and trust in Christ are given more in “abundance.”

Consequently, the God of the universe is a God of second chances, and I challenge you to become more like those servants who honor and glorify God. From Jan 19th through February 23rd, the Mission Action team will ask that you participate in “Operation Mission Possible.” Each Sunday school class who would like to participate will be given 40.00 dollars (“talents” from the Mission Action funds) to increase as each group sees fit.

After one month, the Mission Action team will collect what God has blessed you with, and the funds will be used to further promote the love of Christ through the Mission’s program. Of course, increasing these funds can be done in numerous ways, and it will be exciting to see what you can do through Jesus who gives us strength. Allow God to bless you in a special way. Take part in lifting up the name of Jesus through “Operation Mission Possible”.

Written by Kathy Clamon

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.