CANADA: Yummo Comes Home

Source: Outreach Canada, November 20, 2013

 It is surprising to many Canadians today that 150,000 aboriginal children were forced to go to Indian Residential Schools from 1831 to 1996 as part of Canada’s official efforts to assimilate the indigenous people. It is not surprising that many victims did not survive the experience.

Yummo Comes Home is the story of an Okanogan/Thompson Aboriginal man who revisits the Kamloops B.C. Residential School building where he was hurt to reclaim and bring back home his boyhood innocence and confidence. The son of a settler immigrant, Don Klaassen, portrays the sentiments of the descendants of the immigrant settlers who are discovering this often forgotten portion of Canadian history.

In this 28-minute documentary video, the two men demonstrate what it means to experience reconciliation and take bold steps to shape a hopeful future.

» Learn more. This is a great story of healing from childhood abuse, and it’s sensitively told. You can preview the entire video online.

SOUTH AFRICA: Praying for Peace and Healing on the Streets of Manenberg

Source: 24-7 Prayer, December 16, 2013

Thursday is prayer walk day, and two friends joined us – their first time walking around Manenberg. We left the office and began to walk, only for people to tell us to get off the road because the gangs were shooting at each other.

We obliged, prayed for and declared peace along the street, and then played with a tortoise in a [shop]. Then we were told it was OK to walk again, because the shooting had finished. We did so. As we went, we saw an old man on crutches. We asked to pray for him. He had broken his hip falling off the roof. He had had surgery, and couldn’t walk without crutches, and even then very slowly and in much pain.

After we prayed healing for him, he began to move his leg freely, and exclaimed that he couldn’t do that previously and it felt better. The pain had left, and movement had come! He then wept as he accepted Jesus into his life, still overwhelmed by getting healed. Then he walked home, waving his leg around as he went, unaided by crutches.

» Read the full story.

An Opportunity for You

As you may know, each of the gang behind Missions Catalyst, Marti Wade, Pat Noble, and Shane Bennett, raises support to do the work they do. Missions Catalyst is a part of that work. If it has been helpful for you this year and you’d welcome a chance to say thank you to and bless Marti, Pat, or Shane, we’d like to offer you that opportunity. The links below will direct you to a donation page at their respective organizations, or, if you prefer, to send a note of thanks.

» Give to Marti, or email Marti.

» Give to Pat, or email Pat.

» Give to Shane, or email Shane.

Thank you for being part of the Missions Catalyst tribe. We’re grateful for you.

Missions Catalyst Practical Mobilization

In This Issue: A mission mobilizer’s Christmas list

About Us

Missions Catalyst is a free, weekly electronic digest of mission news and resources designed to inspire and equip Christians worldwide for global ministry. Use it to fuel your prayers, find tips and opportunities, and stay in touch with how God is building his kingdom all over the world. Please forward it freely!

Shane Bennett writes and speaks for a great organization called Frontiers. Lately he’s wondering about how Muslim immigrants in Europe might fully experience God’s blessing.

He’s also working with some buds to market smart phone plans that are price and value competitive, but put profit in the hands of mobilizers. Email him for info on the plan or the vision.

 

 

2013 Practical Mobilization Christmas List

By Shane Bennett

Ronnie-Smith-340x471It is with a sober heart that I welcome you to the 2013 Practical Mobilization Christmas List column. One of our brothers will celebrate this Christmas in a whole new way, but his family will deeply mourn his absence from their table, tree, and lives. Ronnie Smith was killed in Benghazi, Libya on December 5. He was teaching high school chemistry there and ordering his life in a way to bring God’s blessing to Libyans. He leaves behind a wife and young son, along with many saddened but inspired and resolute friends.

This year’s column is dedicated to the memory and example of Ronnie Smith. If you click only one link, let it be this one for a lovely book Ronnie edited called The History of Redemption. Proceeds of the sale of the book go to help Ronnie’s wife Anita and their son. If you’d like to simply make a donation to help them, you can do that here.

As often happens, I believe God will use Ronnie’s sacrifice to inspire many to step up and fill his place and go beyond. Here are some gifts that will lift people’s eyes to the harvest around us.

Faces and Places

Long-time friend and accomplished photographer Mike Staub offers his images of people and places around the globe for sale.  One of his shots, hanging on an office wall, will continue to draw a friend or loved one’s eyes and imagination to the nations. Maybe someday their feet will follow?

See also the great images produced by Matt Brandon and Tim Cowley.

Countries and Capitals

If you want to go big (and foldable), check out this recommendation from Anneli, who with her husband Frank has served with Operation Mobilization for 45 years. (Maybe you’d like to send them kudos or a thank you for their epic service!)

Anneli buys world map fabric, hems it, and gives it away. She says, “I have sent quite a few to pastors and missionaries and this map is an instant attention-getter. The name of each country and the capitol is on the map. It is fun to see students drawn to the map with many realizing their knowledge of geography needs a good brush-up! This fabric map is beautiful, machine washable, and easy to take with you or send overseas to friends.”

Cookbooks

Missions Catalyst reader Lori suggests that these cookbooks from our Mennonite brothers and sisters would make good gifts:

1. For raising awareness:

Through stories and simple “whole foods” recipes, Simply in Season explores how the food we put on our tables impacts our local and global neighbors.

2. For an international smorgasbord:

Extending the Table invites you to experience a vast table with room for everyone and laden with taste-tempting dishes from over 80 countries: peach chutney from Botswana, ginger cooler from Ivory Coast, rice noodles with vegetables from the Philippines, and more. Interspersed among the recipes for these and many more dishes are stories about how hospitality is practiced around the world.

3. For supporting someone else to do the cooking:

If the act of buying and preparing food wouldn’t feel all “holly jolly” to your friend, can I suggest you bypass the cookbook and go straight to something like the Shatila Bakery website? If the UPS guy showing up at your door with baklava doesn’t indicate that God loves the world, I’m not sure what does!

The Gift of Chickens?

Want to help feed the world? A suggestion from my brother: Give chickens!

I know you’re saying, “If I give my friend chickens, I’m going to lose that friend!” Good point. Lucky for you, World Vision allows you to buy two chickens for a family in the developing world in the name of your friend.

“Chickens give children and families a lasting source of nutrition and income,” explains World Vision. “Fresh eggs raise the levels of protein and other nutrients in a family’s diet, and the sale of extra eggs and chickens can pay for vital basics.”

Now, to return the iPad I got my brother and get him chickens instead!

Travel Clothing

Lori (of the cookbooks!) also says, “Give a great travel vest with lots of hidden pockets, so it doesn’t scream ‘Rob me, please!’” Lori’s vest from Scottvest.com was a gift from one of her supporters, which is nice because they’re rather dear!

Lori goes on, “Most of the pockets are on the inside with weight balance, so it doesn’t look frumpy. It helps me dress like a traveler, not a tourist.”

Gadgets

1. For plugging in: 

Here’s a cool gadget you may want to put in one of those pockets – a diminutive 3-outlet surge protector with USB ports and the ability to swivel its way to tough-to-reach outlets. Coupled with a set of adapters, your mobile friends should be able to tap the mains all over the planet.

2. For phoning home:

Some mobilizers never get on a plane, but drive trucker miles! Help them stay connected from behind the wheel while avoiding tickets with a sweet bluetooth headset.

Help those same friends keep their phone powered with this nifty credit-card-sized charger, and when they forget or lose the charging cord (or their kids take it to charge their own devices!), this hand-crankable charger may save the day.

Gifts that Keep Giving

One key task for most missionaries and mobilizers is communicating with donors. Here are a few gifts that will help your friend excel in this important endeavor.

1. For giving away:  

Our buds at the Center for Missions Mobilization are making Hudson on a Mission, a new, illustrated children’s book about church planting from a family’s perspective, available at a deeply discounted rate to any missionary or agency to give to their supporters for a Christmas to thank-you gift. How about grabbing two dozen? (Or whatever your gift budget allows, at US$4 per copy.)

2. For staying in touch:  

If your friend prefers to go electronic, consider blessing him with a gift certificate for a service that lets him create a postcard online with his own photo and text, then have it snail mailed to a donor, friend, or his grandma. At Postcardly.com, US$20 will get you 20 real-life postcards delivered.

3. For getting to the next destination:  

And finally, nothing says, “I love you” like “Here are some airline miles; now go somewhere else!”

Conclusion

May God fill your heart with warmth and joy this Christmas. As we wrestle with the weight of a world gone off the rails, may God give us all grace to celebrate the birth of the king and look forward with great hope to his kingdom’s full presence on the earth.

Practical Mobilization: A Dozen 2013 Highlights

Interested in more practical mobilization ideas? Here are highlights from Shane’s 2013 columns (and a few “special editions”), with links to the website where we archive everything we publish.

  1. Listening: Why, Who, and How » Read this article.
  2. Mobilization: It’s Ninety Percent Listening. » Read this article.
  3. Vision Variance: When God Says, “Go” but your Spouse Says, “Whoa!” » Read this article.
  4. Identity Dilemmas and Living in Both/And Land » Read this article.
  5. Look Smarter Than You Are: Ten Things You Need to Plan Ahead » Read this article.
  6. Seminary/Monastery/Mission Mash-up: How to Get the Next 13,000 Ready for the World » Read this article.
  7. Seven Steps to an Excellent Mission Trip Report » Read this article.
  8. Your Chance to Change the World, One Small Blessing at a Time » Read this article.
  9. Catch a Fish but Kill the Pond » Read this article.
  10. A Prayer for This Next Generation » Read this article.
  11. A Purpose Bigger than Ourselves: Thinking Big about Kids and the Kingdom » Read this article.
  12. Hope for Your Friends Who Hate Muslims: Five Strategies to Diffuse Fear and Anger » Read this article.

 

Missions Catalyst 12.4.13 – World News Briefs

In This Issue: “She accepted the invitation to have someone pray for her needs…”

About Us

Missions Catalyst is a free, weekly electronic digest of mission news and resources designed to inspire and equip Christians worldwide for global ministry. Use it to fuel your prayers, find tips and opportunities, and stay in touch with how God is building his kingdom all over the world. Please forward it freely!

Pat

Pat Noble has been the “news sleuth” for Missions Catalyst since 2004. In addition to churning out the news, she is working to create a SWARM (Serving World A Regional Mobilizers) in Northern New York using the NorthernChristian.org website. You can connect with her at www.whatsoeverthings.com.

 

 

KYRGYZSTAN: Christ and Tradition

Kyrgyz on horseback

Source: Christian Aid Mission, November 21, 2013

Like most ethnic Kyrgyz, [Dinara’s] Muslim family followed the religious traditions of their ancestors. From childhood she believed truth could only be revealed through Islam.

While running an errand in her village, Dinara came upon a strange sight – a gathering of Christians who were openly singing and preaching about their God. She stopped in her tracks when the speaker shared how Jesus Christ changes lives.

Consumed by worries over family quarrels, illness, and mounting debts, this wife and mother of two children longed for peace. She accepted the invitation to have someone pray for her needs.

Three days later Dinara sought the counsel of a Christian neighbor who attended the event, asking how she, too, could become a follower of Jesus.

Today Dinara is growing in her faith and enjoys attending a home Bible study. Her husband thinks she is merely visiting friends. Knowing he will be furious, she dares not tell him or any of their relatives about her conversion.

Identifying oneself as a Christian brings all sorts of challenges for new believers, who experience misunderstanding, ridicule, and in some cases even abandonment by families who feel they have scorned their very heritage.

» Recently the government of Kyrgyzstan allowed a reporter to investigate the country’s prisons. Check out A Month in Prison (Institute for War and Peace Reporting). Readers might also be interested in Thieves of Honour, a new novel set in Kyrgyzstan, and Fields of Gold, an account of ministry in neighboring Kazakhstan (reviewed in our November 27 edition).

GLOBAL: Christian Social Entrepreneurs

Source: Joel News #884, November 29, 2013

Entrepreneurs are essential drivers of innovation and progress. In the business world, they act as engines of growth, harnessing opportunity and innovation to fuel economic advancement.

Social entrepreneurs act similarly, but their passion is to meet the needs of the marginalized, the disadvantaged and the disenfranchised – populations that lack the financial means or political clout to achieve lasting benefit on their own.

This is of course highly compatible with the values, beliefs, and goals of the Church in its mission to achieve social, economic, and environmental justice. Therefore it’s not surprising that there’s a growing movement of Christian social entrepreneurs.

“Christians pursuing social causes have a unique set of advantages including rootedness, freedom from the rat race, a basis for unshakable confidence, and the ultimate clarity of purpose,” says journalist Julia Thompson.”In Christ, we have one direction that sets everything else in its place: to obey and follow our leader, the servant king who turned the universe on its head by hanging on a cross. That truth at once creates and demands all of the innovation, courage, and vision we need. It’s a radical invitation to participate in the ultimate social venture of making all things new.”

» Subscribe to Joel News here.

» See social entrepreneurship at work in the country of Malawi through Sustainable Options in Malawi (OM News) and William Kamkwamba: How I Built a Windmill (TED Talks). Kamkwamba’s story is also told in the book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind and the soon-to-be-released feature documentary film William and the Windmill.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Genocide Looms

Source: ASSIST News, November 20, 2013

Seleka, a coalition of local and foreign Islamic militias, seized control of Central African Republic (population 70 percent Christian) in March. By attacking Christians and sparing Muslims, they have turned CAR into a sectarian tinderbox. “Christian” militias are responding, targeting not just Seleka bases, but local Muslims, who respond by carrying out reprisals against Christians. Peter Bouckaert (Human Rights Watch) warns: “This heinous cycle of inter-religious violence only continues to intensify, threatening to explode into an all-out war between Christians and Muslims.”

UNICEF goodwill ambassador Mia Farrow (who recently returned from CAR), the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng, and other investigators warn that genocide is a real possibility. Please pray for the Church in CAR. May God intervene!

» Read full story with additional background, analysis, and prayer points.

» See also Unspeakable Horrors in a Country on the Verge of Genocide (The Guardian) and Listen to the Silent Crisis in the Central African Republic (Rob Hoskins, One Hope).