We hope you have been enjoying looking for ways to be a blessing to those around you.  Again, the list that we have been sending each day through email (view hear) is meant just as ideas to spur your heart and creativity in how to show kindness to those you live with, work with, go to church with, have fun with, run into in our community, etc. Let's make a big impact on the city of Jonesboro (and the surrounding area) this month and beyond.

February 27th is World Mission Day for the Association of churches that we are a part of (Baptist Missionary Association) that reaches around the world. In our morning services we will be bringing together our tithes and offerings to go to World Missions. That evening we will be gathering together to enjoy food, fellowship, and some fun as we put together care packages for ICU waiting rooms, those in need of food, orphans and foster care, and helping an organization that is in the fight against human trafficking here in NEA.  We will also be putting together power of One boxes, writing cards to shut-ins, etc.

Let me break these two opportunities down:
World Missions Offering.  Last year we set aside the entire offering on this day to go toward World Mission ChangeMakers, and that is our plan again this year.  ChangeMakers are local pastors and missionaries in foreign countries who have been trained by our association to reach their country.  Some of these men and women work alongside American missionaries in their country, others have been trained and then sent to start churches, orphanages, schools, in their country.  These men and women, and the work they do, rely on offerings that the churches here in the states bring together to provide for their ministry needs.  Last year our church gave over $11,000 (which was part of nearly $500,000 that Association churches gave toward this offering)!  This year, with more time and preparation, I hope we will send more funding and help more missionaries do ministry in their homeland. (If you want to give toward this now you can through our online giving through the app or website)
That evening at 5:00 we are asking everyone to come back together, bring your favorite finger food, listen in on a couple of things we need to decide on as a church, and then work side by side as we put together care packages, bags, and boxes for these different ministries that are taking place here in Jonesboro. This coming week we will be sending a list of things that you can contribute to the bags, boxes, and packages, and then that night we will have fun as we put the outreach supplies together.  Following this night of preparation, you will have an opportunity to help distribute some of the outreach bags to those you may know who have a need. You will not have to deliver them that night, but maybe sometime the following week.
 
It is going to be a great day as we do our part in fulfilling the great commission:

"Go and make disciples of ALL THE NATIONS (including our own),
baptizing them in The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
and teach them to observe all that I commanded you;
and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
(Jesus) Matthew 28:19-20