Did you get to be part of Operation Enduring Friendship at the FGBC Celebration 2004? Wasn’t it amazing to see what happened as we worked together to bless the Schaefers and their ministry?
As Women of Grace and the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches, we wrote notes, gathered supplies and assembled over 2,000 care packages for the wives of soldiers with whom Chaplain Schaefer was deployed in Afghanistan.
We’d like to do something like that again! But this time, we’d like to bless a visionary ministry in Southern California.
Oscar Chavez is a church planter working in Northridge, California. Over the past nine years, he has helped start three churches and a training center for future Hispanic church planters.
Not long after he was saved, he was burdened to find a way to share the truth he was learning from God’s Word with his people, the Hispanic community. He church-planted on his own for a while. Then a friend told him about the FGBC and encouraged him that it would be better for him to work with a team than to work alone.
He is passionate about sharing Christ with others, and dreams big. How big? Well, his dream is a church planting movement among Hispanics in the USA and Latin America!
We would love to partner with Pastor Oscar and his churches in their dream and give them a resource with which to reach into the neighborhoods around them. Our goal? Seven hundred backpacks filled with school supplies that they can distribute to needy families in their communities!
For this project we will need: (new items only, please)
700 backpacks
700 12-packs of pencils
700 24-packs of crayons
1400 erasers
700 pairs of scissors
700 glue sticks
1400 notebooks (80 page, spiral bound, 81/2’ x 11”, 1 subject)
700 pencil boxes.
You can collect items in your group and bring them with you to California, or you can collect money and then purchase items once you arrive.
Is this a big goal? You bet! But just like we found two years ago, God does amazing things when we work together to build up His body. Let’s work together to bless what God is doing in Southern California!
If you have questions or need more information, please contact Beth Bryant, beth@gbcanada.ca; (604) 591-1514.