A Window on Latin America

As the friendships grew, the impulse to share the gospel lurked closely. So many of us who grew up in church were taught to treat gospel sharing as an urgent task to check off rather than as a natural part of a growing relationship. Yet it felt out of place to use such a tactic among my Muslim neighbours who have gently shown their love to me through our daily lives. With a deep desire to honour them, I chose to share life first, and surrendered the urge to check off my own evangelism to-do list.

Through choosing friendship first, I began to trust that taking one neighbour coat shopping or learning to make baklava from another neighbour were God’s creative ways to soften the fertile soil in my neighbours’ hearts. I admit that this slow process isn’t easy, and the doubts of me not doing the “right Christian thing” still linger. It’s in this tension that I came to rely on praying regularly for my neighbours and the Muslim world.

The 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World prayer movement (https://www.30daysprayer.com) has taken place every year since 1993. It encourages believers to pray for Muslims during the Islamic month of Ramadan. Garrison attributes this prayer movement as a key reason why record numbers of Muslims are now turning to Christ. I had heard about this prayer initiative before, but not until God introduced me to my neighbours did I come to rely on prayer as the key strategy for God to open doors of faith among Muslims. Participating in this prayer movement has given me the hope to believe that God hears our collective prayers and is working to draw my neighbours to Himself as part of His greater redemptive story. Every time I pray, the doubts fade and I choose again to trust that God is invested in the lives of my neighbours much more than I am.

While I still haven’t had a chance to share the gospel with my neighbours yet, I have made friends with whom pre COVID-19, I watched movies, celebrated birthday parties, and foraged at the local park. Being friends with my neighbours allows me a place in their lives to continue sharing my faith through love and conversation. As I listen to their hearts, they can listen to mine too.

As well, prayer has become an essential activity in my little corner of this unfolding drama, especially during the pandemic when I can’t visit them as I used to. Besides praying for my neighbours by name locally, and praying for the Muslim world to experience breakthrough globally, prayer also girds me with strength to trust that God will show up in my neighbours’ lives and call them home to Himself.

Ramadan will take place from April 13 to May 12, 2021. God invites us to take part in His story of redemption in the Muslim world through dedicated prayer. Will you join in? 

For the next five years, the Baptist Women’s Union of Latin America is our prayer partner. This spring we invite you to pray the Lord’s Prayer as often as you are able for our Latin American sisters in Christ. Here is one version you may pray.

GOD, WHO IS IN US here on earth, holy is Your Name in the hungry who share their bread and their song. Your kingdom come, which is a land flowing with milk and honey. Let us do Your will, raising our voice when all are silent. You are giving us our daily bread in the song of the bird and the miracle of the corn. forgive us for keeping silent in the face of injustice. Don’t let us fall into the temptation of taking up the same arms as the enemy. But deliver us from evil. Give us the perseverance to look for love, even if we fail; so we shall have known Your kingdom which is being built forever and ever. Amen.

Adapted from a Latin-American Lord’s Prayer, credited to numerous sources. Sourced from Sojourners (sojo.net) 

chrIsTmAs cArOLs, drIvE-By vIsITs ANd cArds

Inspired good during pandemic-shaped days

THROUGH 2020, as lockdowns and social distancing shaped how our churches and women’s groups gathered, women in the missionary circles from the Amherstburg Regular Missionary Baptist Association (ARMBA) shifted their community outreach. “We can get wound up about what we can’t do,” says Brenda Lambkin, past president of CBWOQ and current president of the circle at first Baptist Church, Chatham. “But there’s so much we can do.” And so ARMBA women did.

Cards While they still organized clothing drop-ins (Windsor), donated to schools that continued to offer breakfasts for hungry children (Chatham) and raised funds through their annual walkathon (Association event), the card ministry of several circles ramped up. Canada Post delivered over 200 cards in 2020, all from ARMBA missionary women, to families in Puce, Chatham, Union, Dresden and Windsor.

Valentines, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Welcoming new babies or expressing sympathy on a loved one’s passing. As a replacement for the Mother’s and father’s Day acknowledgements given out at those Sunday morning services. These missionary women regularly sent cards that, more often than not, included handwritten Scripture verses, pens or gift cards. They were sent to the families and individuals on the missionary circle lists—past missionary women, seniors and shut-ins. These were modest lists, plumped out to between 20 to 30 names per church with the addition of families who lived in proximity to their churches. These families lived with the economic

effects of the pandemic: reduced work hours or no hours at all.

In November, one member of Chatham’s missionary circle felt God’s prompt to create little gift bags each filled with a mask, Tim Horton’s gift card and a donut. An avid walker, she began to give out her bags to the homeless on the streets as she walked by.

Drive-bys, food baskets and carolling Not all cards were mailed. Women from Union Baptist Church’s women’s missionary circle dropped off Mother’s and father’s Day cards and tokens, surprising recipients. “We found that people were feeling disconnected and some were experiencing loneliness and anxiety,” remembers Sarah Tewkesbury, circle president. “People really enjoyed the chance

cOmmuNIty eNGaGemeNt

Please visit our website at baptistwomen.com/causes and dive into our new community engagement page. We’ve built this resource to share all of the community outreach that women in our Baptist churches have done through 2020 and into this year and beyond. We hope you’ll be stirred up to love and good deeds. to see someone at their door, socially distanced of course. They enjoyed the chance to reconnect on a personal basis.”

Women in Windsor’s missionary circle appealed to the church to bring donations for Christmas food packages. for the seven years previous, the church had joined these missionary circle women in preparing and serving a hot meal once a month to 100 people in the community. With social distancing rules in place, the pivot to Christmas food baskets made sense. “I was overwhelmed,” says president Madge Walker as she shares about the basket drive. “People dropped off so much— bags of rice, cans, sausages and bacon, turkeys . . . We were all shocked.” Eleven food baskets were dropped off to families who lived in the church neighbourhood and needed assistance. “We were used in a powerful way,” says Madge.

Christmas also saw Union women pivoting to singing Christmas carols outside long-term care residences and the homes of 17 seniors and shut-ins from their church family.

Inspired good arrives in the humblest of gestures—a card; a little gift bag; food baskets, carols sung outside windows. Little things perhaps, yet all offered in love and with intelligence: These women missionaries were invested in their communities to the degree that they quickly knew which families needed help. “The bottom line is we keep meeting and praying and doing what we can,” says Brenda Lambkin. Indeed. 

Photos courtesy ARMBA women missionaries