I just experienced a wonderful blessing … I sat down this morning to prepare our monthly partner letter. It has been on my priority list this week and it had to be done today as we are heading off to the mountains for a wedding celebration. I knew I was going to highlight the Church Building Project this month and I wanted to include an insert that would show some of the beautiful churches we are building. I gathered a few pictures and called our graphic arts person to my office to explain the layout I was looking for. I wanted some simple text giving the details of our progress the past year.
That is when the shock surprise happened. I looked at the records and found that we had built and dedicated 25 churches since May of 2020. I thought it was a mistake … I counted three more times to be sure. To my delight, the stats were correct! We have built 25 churches; we have 6 more under construction right now and we have 20 new projects targeted for the year ahead.
Covid Was The Perfect Storm For Church Building … I looked at Ritigrai, our person working on the graphic design of the insert. I asked him, “How did we do that!?!” He laughed and said, “Builders didn’t have work anywhere else due to Covid shutdown and the congregations were trapped at home because of Covid and were free to help with the grunt work.” That and our partners were extremely generous in their giving. The results … 25 thriving congregations worshipping in their new facilities. This made my day! Thank you for your generosity which made this possible.
More Good News … The six projects under construction are paid for and half of the new projects have committed support. That leaves ten churches that need funding. With our matched giving from ICM, we only need $5000/location to get these churches built. Let us know if you would like to help.
Burma (Myanmar) Update … The situation is far from over as the military regime continues to attack innocent civilians causing havoc nationwide. We have been able to supply over 170 tons of rice to the IDPs in Burma. That is over 4 million meals. In addition to the rice we have been able to supply truckloads of supplies including medicine, food product, water purification systems, tarps for temporary housing, mosquito nets, flashlights, etc.. We are committed to this project long term. If you would like to help us with this humanitarian relief project, please designate your gift Burma Relief. You can send a check or go to our website www.lwmi.org to donate.
Together we are making a difference…
Charlie and Cathy