Category: Stay Connected

This update is from a report by Rod Matthews, GCI mission developer for SE Asia and the Pacific.

Nepal: house churches, mobile Bible school

We are reaching with the good news into the foothills of the Himalayas! In Nepal, GCI provides project support for our partner in ministry, Himalayan Gospel Church led by Deben Sam. Deben is working to plant house churches in several remote villages north of Kathmandu on the border with Tibet. When he visits these villages, he takes Bibles translated into the local languages and sometimes a small generator and movie projector to show films about Jesus.

Deben reports that less than 5% of the pastors and church leaders in Nepal have opportunity to attend a seminary and thus are weak in their ability to expound Scripture. As a result, most members of  local churches are poorly grounded in even the basics of Christian doctrine.

Also, most members and pastors are so poor that they do not have the resources (including time) to leave their family-supporting farm work and go for training outside their home area. Therefore, Deben plans to provide training via a mobile Bible School that will visit them where they live so that they can learn then teach their own people. He also plans to train missionaries who will reach into areas where there is yet no church. Deben dreams of an annual three-month-long Bible School in Kathmandu.

In teaching his classes, Deben uses two GCI publications that have been translated into Nepali: How to Become a True Disciple of Jesus Christ and Basic Christian Teachings. We recently funded the reprinting of 3000 copies of the second one. 

India: suffer the little children

Because India has a large number of abandoned and needy children, our congregations in India support a home and orphanage for disadvantaged children (see picture at right).

GCI Indian pastor Danny Zachariah reports that GCI held a residential camp at his congregation’s building last May. There were 27 campers, age 4 to 14 (see picture below). Members provided food and served as camp counselors.

One of our Indian members, Dr. Piria Suntharam, built and now runs a home for children in the Indian village of Kalthanipadi (see picture below). The home houses about 35 youth who are orphans or whose parents cannot care for them. GCI congregations in India and Australia support the home. Various building projects there are underway.

This update is from GCI Canada member Mark Yandt who was one of the riders in the event.

Our Canadian youth camp, Camp Connections, recently held its third annual Peddling Kilometers fundraiser. The 200 km bicycle ride was completed by 13 riders (pictured below) who worked hard prior to the ride selling pledges for the kilometers they would cover. In this way funds were raised for Friends of Camp Connections (FOCC), an organization that subsidizes the registration fees paid by needy campers.

Over the past three years the event has brought participants together from Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Peterborough and Petawawa and has raised over $22,000 (Canadian). Though this year’s results are not yet finalized, it looks like we’ve raised over $10,000! This is a testament to the efforts of the riders who worked for months doing fundraising prior to the ride. Not only did they gain support from friends and colleagues (in person and online), they had the opportunity to tell people about the value of Camp Connections.

This year’s ride started at Parliament Hill in Ottawa and took us through eastern Ontario to Hawkesbury where we stayed overnight before heading the next day to Montreal. Camp director Lynn Lawrence welcomed us with a hot shower and a BBQ dinner.

SEP Florida, a GCI Generations Ministries camp, held its 2013 summer session on June 11-14 at beautiful Camp Shalom north of Ocala, Florida with 48 youth and 22 adult staff. The group enjoyed sunshine, great food and challenging activities. Most of all, they enjoyed sharing, with Jesus, fellowship with God and one another. Several youth were first-time campers.

Camp director Marty Davey noted that after the camp concluded, the owner of the facility commented that in his 15 years of hosting camps, he considers ours to be one of the top five, noting our spirit of love and cooperation. He said were we are one of the most respectful, courteous, knowledgeable and organized groups he has ever worked with.

The Australian National Conference, Life Together in Christ, was held on the beautiful Gold Coast on May 31 to June 2.

More than 200 participants enjoyed a wonderful celebration of fellowship and learning. The conference was open to all who wanted to attend. People came from all over Australia and some from as far away as Malaysia and New Zealand. Participants included representatives from Perichoresis and GraceWalk ministries that, like GCI, embrace a Trinitarian, incarnational perspective on theology.

Here are comments from conference participants: “It was most uplifting, encouraging and enjoyable.” “I left feeling uplifted and filled with contentment.” “More—more learning, more fellowship, more opportunities like this please!” “Awesome conference—inspiring, encouraging and lovely atmosphere.” “It was so spiritually rich, refreshing, edifying and rewarding to spend time together exploring the deep things of God.” Joseph Tkach commented: “It was wonderful to have visitors attend the conference with us. Their fellowship enriched the gathering. Many people told me that they were encouraged and inspired by the growth God is giving to us.”

A positive spirit was evident throughout the conference. There was deep joy in appreciating our union with Christ and the communion we have with our Triune God and one another. The next Australian general conference is eagerly awaited.

GCI’s congregation in Kansas City, Missouri, recently held a backyard Bible camp for children. Here is a video showing the camp in operation.

https://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=482302985173302

In May, 51 campers from the Philippines participated in the SEP Visayas camp held at the Wuthering Heights beach resort in the city of San Jose.

The campers were served by 35 enthusiastic staff members from GCI churches located in the Philippine provinces of Visayas and Mindanao. The staff was led by camp director Sarah Lynn Bahinting.

Camp activities were designed to develop the camper’s body, mind, social skills and spiritual health. With assistance from GCI Generations Ministries, the staff used these activities to help campers come to know and serve the God who loves them all as his dear children. GCI Philippines national director Eugene Guzon conducted a baptism class. As a result, 15 campers were baptized.

GCI member David Dizon, son of GCI pastor Bermie and Carmelita Dizon, was named valedictorian of his class at John Muir High School in Pasadena, California. David delivered a keynote speech at his graduation (watch it below). He was trained in public speaking through speech clubs in his GCI home church and through leadership training in GCI camps and short-term missions.

http://youtu.be/2rcvvYx08wA

Randy Bloom, who directs GCI’s Church Multiplication Ministries (CMM), recently visited Alaska for meetings with leaders of GCI’s Kenai and Anchorage congregations (see the group picture below). The focus of the meetings was how these churches can establish a church planting network to support the planting of new GCI churches in the region.

Rod Koop from the Foursquare Church joined the discussions. Rod who formerly served as Foursquare’s US director of church planting, now is Foursquare’s mission director in Alaska. He has offered to assist GCI in recruiting, preparing and deploying GCI church planters in Alaska.

Interested in church planting in Alaska or elsewhere in the US? Email Randy.Bloom@gci.org or go to http://cmm.gci.org/.

 

This update on GCI’s relief work following the recent tornadoes in the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma area is from Mike Rasmussen, pastor of GCI’s church in the area. Tornadoes hit the area in two waves (click here for a report on the first). The second occurred last Friday-Saturday with multiple tornadoes and severe flooding that took at least 18 lives. 

The devastation caused by the recent storms here is unbelievable. With assistance from GCI’s Disaster Relief Fund, our members here have been helping in the relief effort. We served hot meals to dozens of first responders, many of whom had not had a hot meal in several days. We also helped serve meals to tornado victims and we provided victims with large plastic bins to store valuables recovered from the rubble of their homes. We also gave gift cards to purchase necessities not provided by the relief agencies. Every person helped expressed deep thanks.

At one point, having run out of storage bins, I was headed out of the disaster area. I came across an elderly woman digging in the ruins. I gave her a couple of gift cards and asked, “What is the one thing you need right now that is not being offered by the other relief organizations?”  She thought for about two seconds and quietly said, “If only I had a few bins to load my stuff into.” I smiled and thought about how good God is and how he has such a wonderful sense of humor. We told her to hold on and we would buy her some bins and bring them back to her. She started to cry and said “Are you kidding?” I assured her that we weren’t and went to buy the bins.

Despite such encouraging encounters, I found myself getting quite depressed as the week wore on. There is so much devastation and so many people left with nothing. Yet in the midst of it all, God’s love has been shining brightly—through the first responders, through the relief organizations and through all the people who have rallied to help.

We were starting catch our breath following the Moore tornado when we were hit again. A huge super cell that packed something like 17 tornados headed for the neighborhood where both our church building and our home are located. I arrived home to find that my wife Juli had built a fortress in our hallway with mattresses, blankets and pillows.

As the tornado started to pick up speed it suddenly changed direction and started to head down toward Moore. Juli and I were calling and texting our members who live in the storm’s path to be sure they were watching the news. With these came massive amounts of hail and a deluge of rain. Area streets flooded and cars and people were stranded. We thank God that none of our members were injured or suffered any major damage.

My thanks to all who have been praying for us and to those who have texted, emailed and phoned. Your support is much appreciated! Many GCI congregations have contacted me offering financial assistance and/or work parties. I am deeply moved and encouraged by this support. To keep things legal and fully accountable, it is best for you to send your donations to the GCI Disaster Relief Fund and then our headquarters staff will send us the money needed to help the tornado victims.

In the midst of all this, we are reminded that God’s love and faithfulness toward us  never end. We know that he holds us in his loving embrace and carries us when we feel we can no longer go on. Here in Oklahoma we prayed at church last weekend for all those in Missouri and farther east as these storms continue to wreak havoc in the eastern United States.

This update from Pamela Gebauer describes an event our French-speaking congregation in Montreal Canada helped plan and organize.

Several GCI members participated in Praises Beyond Cultures, an interdenominational outreach concert held on April 27 in Montreal. More than 150 attended, celebrating the unity in diversity that is a gift from our Lord.

We were blessed by the diversity and fervor of several musical presentations including ones from a Vietnamese band, a group of Cantonese singers, a Ghanaian choral group, a Mandarin praise group and two groups of GCI members: the praise group Ensemble and the youth band Collision.