Giving Tuesday is just around the corner.

Our National/International Mission team are once again helping you be part of the Giving Tuesday where we can provide funds for our mission programs within the United Methodist Church.  

December 1st is going to arrive before we know it.   If you want to know more...please check out the Giving Tuesday website.

Considering there are more than 350 missionaries and more than 800 mission projects, we have narrowed down the search for you.  Missionaries and projects are identified by number so here are a few special numbers.  Each are linked to the webpage to give you more information. 

Missionaries:
Clara Biswas  #13952Z 
Ardell Graner #10836Z

Projects with special significance:
Latin America Bible University in Costa Rica  #10247B     We hope that you will support this project as our thank you to Margie Miller for serving there as an Individual Volunteer. 

Operation Classroom has 2 project numbers.
        Operation Classroom - Sierra Leone  #12922A
        Operation Classroom - Liberia  #3020494

Children of Abraham #3021427    This is the only Advance Project in the state of Indiana and it happens to be located in our neck of the woods...Hammond area. 

Won't you please get onto the Online Giving website and check out what information is required for giving?   Giving Tuesday begins at Midnight (Central Time) on December 1.   The first $1,000,000 donated will be matched dollar for dollar with a few restrictions such as no project can get more than $25,000.

You can look for projects that might be near and dear to your heart such as UMCOR simply by typing the name in the box provided on the giving screen.  Those 5 letters will lead you to many project numbers.  Be sure to identify that you are part of Valparaiso 1st UMC.   Your gift will be noted as coming from our congregation.    

Have fun.   This is one way we can let our missionaries know we are thinking of them.   You may remember the 1st year for Giving Tuesday, $6.5 million was raised for mission.  Last year many organizations got involved so our giving on this day was $2.5 million.   Both years were so important for the ministries supported.   We are so blessed ... let this day be an expression of our thanks. 

Living in a culture of violence...

Margie involved in conversation around Living in a Culture of Violence.

One of the new activities for our dear friend Margie Miller is to be part of a discussion-learning group.   Within the student body of UBL many countries are represented.  That's one of the beauties of UBL...students within the context of digging deeper into their own personal belief structure and the Biblical courses that will prepare them to lead back in their home countries, have a safe place to really talk about issues that face them back home.  

Margie writes: I am sending along this newsletter with picture (See the photo above) telling about a new group of which I am a part...wanting you to know one more blessing in my life here as I live and LEARN so much alongside these dear people who are studying and leading here at the UBL.

Her dear friend Ruth, a UBL professor and Baptist missionary, gathered a group of students to come together after hours to tackle political problems following one of the famous potluck meals.  With participants from Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Peru, they came together around the topic of "Living in a Culture of Violence".   Each country would present the issue from their prospective with a few questions from others.   After all 4 countries were heard from, they would then have an open discussion on the topic.  Ruth shared in her newsletter. 

 

The stories were heartbreaking. They spoke of living in a suffocating atmosphere of fear and mistrust that permeates every aspect of their lives. They detailed the structural violence corroding their countries: corruption, poverty, illiteracy, concentration of wealth in a few families, military repression, impunity, lack of justice. They claimed that not only were the governments not able to control the criminality, gangs, and mafias, but they participated in them and profited from them. The governments, they said, align with international corporations to steal land from Indigenous peoples to exploit petroleum and minerals. One student told of the systematic destruction of his people, the Indigenous Miskitos of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. All spoke with passion and pain. They detailed how the structural violence has provoked domestic violence, drug and alcohol addiction, and street crime. The pervasive impunity has motivated a vigilante justice in which criminals are burned alive by the community. The terror has forced mass migrations, breaking up families and communities.

What then, has been the role of the church? Surely the church has stood out against these injustices, has spoken for the poor and marginalized, has called for justice? No, it has not, they agreed. They divided the church into three groups:

1. Those who have their head in the clouds and are heavenly bound, not to be concerned about worldly things.
2. Those who see their opportunity and join the system, using religious rhetoric to win votes, power and wealth.
3. Those who oppose injustice and stand for the poor. They are quickly “disappeared” by the state apparatus.

Where is our church (United Methodist Church and/or Valparaiso 1st) in our culture of violence right here in the USA?  Where are we personally?   Is this one of the hot topics for the future at FUMC?  

 

The next Political Dinner will be November 6.   Lift the students, Ruth and Margie up in prayer as they enter into another evening of meaningful ways to be a world changer.