GMO 2020 to Reach the “Least of These”

Dec 9, 2020

The IBC’s 2020 Global Missions Offering is going to help some of the “least of these” in the world today – the women and children refugees in Lesvos, the schools and children in Lebanon, and the Pomeranians, a little-reached people group in Brazil.

IBC Missions                                                                                                           Video Link

Forty percent of the offering is for IBC Missions, and this year is going to All4Aid, founded by former IBC pastor Rodrigo Assis da Silva.  All4Aid is on-site on the Greek island of Lesvos and have been offering hygiene and laundry for the women and children, first in Camp Moria and now in the new settlement.

All4Aid is looking to move their center closer to the new settlement so that they can serve the community better.  In the meantime, they are running a shuttle bus from the settlement to the center so that women can have showers and do laundry.

“Yes, we have facilities that provide women and children with important basic needs like hygiene and laundry,” All4AID writes, “but we also want to be a space that does more than that. We are a space where women and children can be safe, where they can learn and where they can build community, no matter how much time they are with us for.”

IBC Aid                                                                                             Video Link
 

Thirty percent of the offering is for IBC Aid, and this year it is going to help some of the people hardest hit by the explosion in Beirut, Lebanon.  This calamity could not have come at a worse time for a country on the brink of financial collapse and social implosion while the number of coronavirus cases continued to surge.

Our gifts will be directed to the Lebanese Baptist Evangelical Convention and the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development (LSESD).  LSESD, in particular, is currently helping several schools in Beirut repair the damages caused by the blast and is looking to help a larger number of schools get back into shape as the new school year starts.

The explosion destroyed more than 70 public schools and 50 private schools.  Because of the economic situation, schools are struggling to rebuild and survive.  LSESD writes, “The major challenge our educational system is facing is that what we lose today cannot be salvaged tomorrow; damages that are incurred have lasting effects.”

 

EBMI Project:  Pomeranians

In the bleak part of the mountainous area of the state Espirito Santo, Brazil, live approximately 120,000 descendants of the German Pomeranians in great poverty and with no perspective.  They are heavily influenced by superstition and the occult. Up to today, they speak their Pomeranian dialect, and some of them hardly speak any Portuguese at all.

Valério and Sandra Kurth, of Pomeranian descent themselves, are passionately working to reach their own ethnic group.  The Kurths and three other pastor couples have formed a network to strengthen the church planting and to make it more effective. They want to plant churches in still unreached places in creative ways. They are sharing the good news with people through the radio and by spreading DVDs and CDs with evangelistic movies and messages in their own language. This initiative is proving quite effective.

The Pomeranians are a closed group and do not accept new things easily. When people do find faith in Christ, their lives are being changed completely and radically. And people see the changes in their lives and begin to ask questions about their new life.

 

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