Missions Monday! Letter from Sponsored Family

One of the blessings of assisting a family in crisis through Mission Without Borders is being able to encourage them with your prayers and letters. You are encouraged to write short notes several times a year. Of course, you don't want to talk politics, talk about your vacation in France, or other frivolous things. It's an opportunity to encourage people who might not get very much of it- other than through the Mission Without Borders coordinator visits. Poverty itself is discouraging. And when there's no easy way out, I'm sure it can be stressful.  So I have been stretched to learn ways to be encouraging, without being cheesy or fake.

This week I received a letter from Moldova...

Sadly, the family I help is suffering with very serious illness.  Unless God intervenes, there will likely be a parental death soon.  And that's so very sad.  I think the best encouragement I can give is from the Scriptures.  I don't know the specifics of the P family's faith (the coordinators encourage families to attend church and offer counseling and Christian literature but serve people of all faiths or no faith) but I know that they pray and that the children attended Christian summer camp. 

Moldova is culturally a heavily Orthodox Christian country.  The Orthodox faithful use the Psalms heavily in daily prayers and every service.  It is the "prayer book of the Bible" after all!  So I've tried to send short notes from the Psalms encouraging the family to cry to the Lord like David and place their hope in Him.  I was encouraged by this article to pray Psalm 139 for the family (check it out!).



The latest update from Mission Without Borders also included info on the coordinator for your family.  This is the person who is responsible to help Mission Without Borders care for the family's spiritual, emotional, educational, and material needs.  They visit, pray with, and assist the family on their journey out of poverty.  From what I witnessed in Albania,  a coordinator's job is tough!  Working with limited resources and trying to ascertain the needs of the families you are responsible for AND praying for/with them AND encouraging them/helping them toward self sufficiency.  They work long days and it has to be mentally and emotionally taxing as well.  Thank God for these faithful workers.

What are the benefits of helping a family?  One benefit is knowing that one family has food on the table this month.  I can't feed the world but I can help one family.  I appreciate the fact that the children are in school- not on the streets or having to work/help their parents to pay for food/rent/heat.  But most of all, and I pray this will happen, they will hear the Gospel, repent, and accept the Lord.  I pray the children will grow into well adjusted Christian adults and be able to support themselves because they got a full education and life skills.   Maybe my family will never be able to support themselves without help (due to terminal disease). But I pray and believe that the chains of poverty will be broken (if not in this then maybe the next generation).  Please pray for the P family.  I don't share pictures or the full name for their privacy but God knows them.