This Year's Thanksgiving Eve Offering Recipients

GLOBAL VOICES

This Year's Thanksgiving Eve Offering Recipients

THREE PROJECTS

1 Media Associates International/ LittWorld 2022

Missionary: John Maust

Bringing Christian Truths to Life Around the World

Given the fresh challenges and opportunities for Christian publishing in our pandemic world, we face a particularly strategic time for global Christian communicators to gather for mutual equipping, encouragement and vision-sharing. Next year’s LittWorld Conference 2022 “Stronger Together: Publishing Hope Beyond Crisis” will provide fresh vision and skills for some 200 publishing staff and writers from 40-plus countries as they gather in Hungary this coming April.

Many participants will have worked for months in relative isolation due to the pandemic, so the conference will provide a desired return to in-person interaction between Christian publishing peers from around the world. LittWorld is primarily targeted to Christian publishers and writers from difficult countries with little access to local training or encouragement. Many of these participants will need some form of scholarship assistance to attend.

The gifts of College Church’s Thanksgiving Eve Offering will provide full conference scholarships and partial travel assistance for scholarship recipients to attend the conference.

Each scholarship candidate will complete an application and be thoroughly vetted by Media Associates International (MAI) staff. We will give priority to candidates with little access to local or Western funding sources, who have not previously attended a LittWorld, and who demonstrate gifting and commitment to serve the Lord and their nations through Christian publishing or writing.

One full conference scholarship, including all meals and lodging for the five-day event, is $850. The cost of travel will vary depending on the candidate's point of departure.

“I never imagined God would bless me so abundantly,” said a 2018 scholarship recipient from Bhutan who published two books after the conference. “I never met so many talented men and women of God. I was awed. I was humbled. I was joyous. I was overwhelmed and, yes, I was exceedingly refreshed and rejuvenated.”

Christian communicators who attend a LittWorld often refer to themselves as part of the MAI global "family," and stay in touch with MAI and with one another. Our global ministry has grown at the grassroots level as a result of holding LittWorld conferences in the various world regions—formation of MAI regional boards in Europe, Africa and Asia being a prime example.

The gifts of this special offering at Thanksgiving will help connect Christians often working in isolated countries with their global family and help give voice to the church as we speak to new opportunities and unchanging gospel truths.

2 Mission Eurasia/A Family for Every Orphan

Missionary: Anita Deyneka

Caring for Children in India, Bangladesh, Ghana and Uganda

As of August of this year, two million children have lost a parent and/or grandparent caregiver as a result of COVID-19 associated deaths across the globe. Children are being orphaned at an alarming rate and more likely to end up in an institution, even if they have only lost one parent. However, we know institutions are not the answer and that children who are cared for in a loving and stable family, as God designed, show great resiliency, attachment and development.

The current needs are so great that governments are reaching out to churches and Christian leaders, including our partners, asking for assistance. All of our partners share our Christian faith and many are pastors themselves. The pandemic is giving them, churches, and the rest of the Christian community the unique opportunity to rise up and care for the vulnerable. People who had not before interacted with the church, or our partners, are experiencing the message and love of Christ, and governments are recognizing them as a primary pillar of support!

Gifts from the people of College Church will provide for at-risk family support and foster and adoption-related family services due to COVID-19. Our support at this time will provide help in the following areas:

• expand support to meet the rising needs

• help children remain in their families, out of institutions, and in school

• provide monthly food boxes to bridge a gap in income

• respite care in a family-style home while a parent recovers

• assist with medical needs and counseling services

• provide school supplies and resources for a child to attend school

• working with appropriate authorities to ensure the well-being and safety of a child

• guide and assist more parents through daunting, and oftentimes overwhelming, foster and adoption processes

Our partners ensure the process is not a roadblock for parents moving forward in their call to foster or adopt. Foster and adoptive parents in trauma-informed care to prepare and help them meet the unique needs of their child with a history of trauma. Post placement support and child therapy would be expanded which is critical to a child and family’s success.

Praise God at-risk families are reaching out for support, and foster and adoptive families are stepping up to care for orphaned and vulnerable children during this deep time of need, but they desperately need guidance, counseling and resources to provide for their needs. With additional resources, our partners can minister to more children and families; meeting their needs to ensure more children can remain in their families or safe and loving foster or adoptive families.

3

Mission Partner: World Relief Chicagoland

From Afghanistan to Chicagoland Helping to resettle our Afghan neighbors

Many of us have watched the situation in Afghanistan and felt heartbroken and powerless as thousands of families fled for their lives. Watching their fear and grief has been heartbreaking.

World Relief offices across the country are expected to resettle thousands of Afghan evacuees, and World Relief Chicagoland (WRC) has already begun resettling new arrivals who fled for their lives from Afghanistan in recent months. WRC is resettling over 130 Afghans in addition to the more than 750 refugee families from other parts of the world. These new Afghan arrivals have little more than carry-on suitcases. They already have an urgent need for:

• stable housing

• food

• medical care

• mental health support, and more

In addition to those immediate needs, these new arrivals will need help to:

• learn English

• secure stable jobs

• access legal services

• build the relationships that will help them adjust to life in a new community

The Thanksgiving Eve Offering will help tangibly meeting their needs. WRC estimates that supporting a family of four for the first 90 days following their arrival will cost $10,000 per household. That $10,000 will ensure that the entire family has access to the resources and relationships needed for them to begin working toward stability so that they can rebuild their lives.

From global writers and publishing staff to vulnerable children in India, Bangladesh, Ghana and Uganda to Afghan people newly arrived in Chicago, our Thanksgiving Eve Offering gifts this year will show the love of Christ in global ways.