NEWS FROM THE MISSION FIELD
Spring Edition 2022
COF MISSIONS UPDATE
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SPRING EDITION 2022
Friend, The first half of 2022 has seen some miracles take place both here at home and all around the world! We are excited to share these stories with you. We hope you will use this booklet as a guide for your prayers: • • • •
Thank God for who He is – our Faithful Father! Thank God for what He’s done – miracles among us! Ask God to make us faithful like He is – with our time, our talents, and our finances. Ask God to send His Spirit to do more in us and through us during the second half of 2022.
Together we can bring HOPE AND FREEDOM to our world!
Mark and Laura Shook FOUNDING PASTORS
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COF MISSIONS UPDATE
Mission: Feed Ukraine In April, we had the unique opportunity to partner with The Outreach Project and package 250,000 fortified, nutritious meals for Ukrainian refugee families. Over 900 volunteers spent their Saturday filling, sealing, labeling, packing, and crating the meals and having a great time while doing so! It was exciting to see families serving together, as well as students, and senior adults! One of the best parts of Mission: Feed Ukraine is that COF was able to come together with several of our local partners to serve side by side. We had volunteers from the National Honor Society, Key Club, Prairie View A&M University, Abba’s House, and Mission of Yahweh. One of the volunteers from Mission of Yahweh, a home for homeless women and children, said this, “I have received so much and I’m grateful for an opportunity to give back.” The Mission of Yahweh volunteers were excited to attend weekend services at COF the following Sunday. Please pray the 250,000 meals will bring a spark of hope to those who receive them.
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SOUTHEAST ASIA
SPRING EDITION 2022
CHANGING DESTINY
CHANGING DESTINIES ACROSS SOUTHEAST ASIA! In the first quarter of the year, we have had 5 children join our school in southeast Asia where they will be safe. These kids come from backgrounds of trafficking and abuse. The total number of children boarding at the school is now at 108, and the school continues to grow with even more children from the community attending. The local community and government have high respect for us as it is one of the best schools in the city. We are blessed that we can provide the best education possible for kids who had a different destiny. During the pandemic the school was run through its own app that was developed for that purpose. Teachers were able to teach from home and our kids received the best education at the boarding school. This has led to unexpected opportunities! We’ve recently been having conversations with other non-profit organizations and children’s homes all over southeast Asia who have seen that this tech-based education can help the children they serve. This means they will have the best possible education without having to build a school or hire highly qualified and experienced teachers in the remotest of locations. We can serve thousands of children if they have access to the internet and a cell phone. We can also help hundreds of organizations fulfill their vision. These are exciting times! Please pray as God moves us along to use education IT to build the Kingdom and serve the least of these.
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A TimeCelto ebrate! COF MISSIONS UPDATE
April 28, 2022 marked the 20th Anniversary of Comunidad de Fe, Cancun! The celebration was marked with praise, prayer, and stories of life change. Marco & Carina Monroy, and Mark & Laura Shook shared the history of the church, including the many miracles God has done across the years. Many shared video testimonies of what God has done in their lives through Comunidad de Fe. Looking back at God’s goodness inspired us all to look forward with anticipation to what God has in store for the next 20 years and beyond!
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SPRING EDITION 2022
OUR FIRST BAPTISM PARTY WORSHIP HARVEST IN UGANDA Warm Greetings from all of us here at Worship Harvest in Uganda.
Since we began encouraging our Missional Communities to share their stories with friends and family who don’t have a relationship with the Lord, we experienced a surge in salvations. We’ve witnessed an average of 1,000 new believers a week! This brought great joy to the ministry, but also left us with a challenge; we were barely having any baptisms. This is when the idea of a monthly baptism party at every Worship Harvest campus was born. We agreed to baptize as many of the new believers as would be able to come, on the last Sunday of every month. It would be a time of great celebration with music, family, and food. And that’s exactly what happened when we launched the baptism parties on February 27, 2022. WE HAD A TOTAL OF 721 BAPTISMS THAT DAY! It was a time of great celebration & joy. We thank God for this great harvest and pray for grace to lead them well. Moses Mukisa, Pastor, Worship Harvest Ministries
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COF MISSIONS UPDATE
Volunteer Spotlight My name is Ivy Sherrod and I have been volunteering in the Special Needs Ministry at COF for 7 years. I’ve had many people ask me why I do special needs and what made me decide to volunteer there. Truth be told, it’s my heart and soul. There is no greater joy than to see this group of people, infants to elderly, so innocently worship Jesus. I get to spend my Sundays teaching them about Jesus and His love but honestly, they sometimes teach me more than I teach them. They teach me to love unconditionally, laugh fearlessly, and that no obstacle is too hard to overcome. Their love for Jesus is SO big. I walk away every Sunday feeling renewed by the love of Jesus and the love of these students. I am also so thankful for the friendships I have made with the volunteers, families, and students. I’ve loved getting to watch students grow up in our ministry, progress through therapies, begin to talk, walk, and so much more. These students have become an extension of my family and I’m forever grateful for that. And to top it all off, we get to be a part of just about EVERY event that the church puts on. High School/Middle School event? We’re there!!! Elementary event? We’re there!!! Prayer/ Worship nights? We’re there!!! Mission events? We’re there!!! So, not only do we get to love on our students, but we get to love on all of the other ministries AND our students get to join in! I love getting to be with our students and be involved in the church as a whole. This means there is a place for everyone! I am so beyond blessed to be a part of a church that puts a priority on making sure those with special needs are loved, cherished, and included. PAGE 7
ONE CUP A DAY
SPRING EDITION 2022
BURUNDI FORTIFIED FOODS Nutrition can be hard to come by in Burundi. Lack of a proper diet puts children at risk of stunted cognitive and physical growth – this is the plight of nearly 60% of Burundi’s children. So we started Burundi Fortified Foods, or BFF, to produce high quality fortified porridge locally to address the challenge of malnutrition. Burundians love a good cup of warm porridge! So we decided to make that our delivery vehicle for all the vitamins and minerals children need to get a strong start and grow well. Each morning in Bubanza, and twenty other communities like it, children receive a cup of fortified porridge to fill their belly with good nutrition to begin their day. For too many, it is the only reliable meal they have on a given day. The results? Our medical team monitor the health progress of the children in our feeding program, One Cup a Day. After three months of daily porridge, the children double in weight! For many this also means better eye sight, longer attention span in the classroom, more energy on the playground. The children are getting stronger. So when you look at all these bright cups, know these children are getting good food and a multi-vitamin’s worth of nutrition. And when you look at these children, know their future gets much brighter with each cup.
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COF MISSIONS UPDATE
A WORTHY REACH KAZOZA FM
At first, I wanted to reach 30 Batwa families and see if we could help them move from vulnerability to viability, from a life of scarcity to one of sustainable provision. Then we set out to work with 660 families in Bubanza. The work looked different – because the scale was different. This partnership involved identity cards and birth certificates, wells providing access to clean water, an elementary school, a trade school, and eventually a health clinic with a birthing suite. But the goal was the same as before, to empower the families to create a good and sustainable life. Then came the opportunity to open Kazoza Bank and offer financial services to those typically left out of the economy. This was another reach on our part to assist small business owners and potential business people to enter the economy with right-sized loans and support. Now, 10 years and 12 branches later, we partner with nearly 50,000 families in creating goods and services for their communities and more jobs for their neighbors. So I see Kazoza FM as another worthy reach. This is the next step in reaching people with the message of economic empowerment, sustainability, and a vibrant future for their families. We want them to know they can make a good living, and we want to equip them with the inspiration and instruction they need to start! In the initial 18-month phase, Kazoza FM will reach an estimated 1,248,000 people – with about 600,000 Burundians between 18-40 who are unemployed and looking for work and a way forward. Kazoza FM wants to teach them how to think bigger and begin their own enterprise in their community. We envision growing the economy from the ground up and assisting a bumper crop of new entrepreneurs who are ready to work for a good living. We keep reaching for a better quality of life for Burundians. We keep reaching more people through community development initiatives, by building tools across agriculture, education, healthcare and banking sectors. And now we stretch further with Kazoza FM: The Voice of Development in Burundi, riding the airwaves to reach more people with a message of hope for a brighter future. Claude Nikondeha, Director of Communities of Hope in Burundi PAGE 9
SPRING EDITION 2022
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COF MISSIONS UPDATE
A LIFE TRANSFORMED MATARA COMMUNITY
The first day the Batwa men stepped foot in Matara, Jean Claude was among them. He arrived with next to nothing in a paper bag. The arduous work of those early days - clearing the land for crops, making footpaths, constructing shelters for their families – weighed on him. He almost gave up and left, doubting any good could come from it or the hand of a stingy God. One of his friends did leave, in fact. But for some reason he stayed. His wife joined him. She became part of the bevy of women planting cabbage and carrots, making daily meals and minding the children. He stayed around long enough to build a stable house and furnish it. Eventually they had children of their own, and they grew up knowing there was ample food, clean water, and a school across the street they would attend when they got old enough. He kept showing up for the work, showing up in the community. Now, 13 years later, he is the proud father of 7 children. He has grown, not one, but multiple businesses. He makes and sells bricks, breeds goats, raises cows and sells milk, and grows corn and beans in his fields to sell in the market. He is an enthusiastic member of Matara’s congregation, Abundant Life Church. Turns out he is a bit of an evangelist, telling others about the generous God that made goodness possible for him and his family. Somewhere between the first day and yesterday, Jean Claude’s heart changed. Maybe it was many little changes as he worked alongside the other men, watched the first crop grow, and shared in the harvest. Maybe he felt a shift inside when his firstborn drank fresh milk or when he slept the first night in their own home. But over time he saw goodness was on offer for him every day in Matara, and that when he showed up so did the Spirit. So he kept collaborating with his community and with God – cultivating the abundant life the Scriptures promise.
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SPRING EDITION 2022
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COF MISSIONS UPDATE
BiBig Numbers, gger Meaning! 20 YEARS OF MINISTRY IN CANCUN. 721 PEOPLE BAPTIZED IN UGANDA. 250,000 MEALS PACKED FOR UKRAINIAN REFUGEES. 1.2 MILLION LISTENERS HEARING A WORD OF HOPE IN BURUNDI. It is easy to get excited about big numbers – but miss the meaning behind them. Each number is really shorthand for significant stories. 20 years of faithful service to the community of Cancun, during good and hard times. 721 people that learned about Jesus and found His witness so compelling that they publicly joined God’s peace campaign across Kampala. 250,000 meals destined to some of the 4+ million refugees created by the most recent war. 1.2 million Burundians, many unemployed, that need a word of encouragement as they try to survive in a stingy economy. The numbers reveal what is hard – and what is hopeful. PAGE 13
250,000 SPRING EDITION 2022
In his gospel, Mark uses some numbers to tell a story, too. Only 200 denarii in their common purse, only 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish to be found among the hungry crowd. The numbers are not in their favor when Jesus tells his disciples to feed the hungry people. They show their paltry findings to Jesus. He took it, blessed it, broke it into pieces for sharing, and gave it to the disciples to distribute. Everyone was fed till their stomachs could not take anymore. Mark reported that there were 12 baskets of leftover bread. He added that over 5,000 men were fed - imagine if he included the women and children in his count! The numbers tell us that from meager provisions, many were fed that day. Jesus knew their hunger. He instructed his disciples to feed them, then showed them how. The numbers speak of 12 baskets of leftover bread, hinting at the 12 tribes of Israel who remained hungry. The significance any Jewish person would recognize – the 12 tribes will be delivered from their hunger and maybe even their oppression. Mark intends his readers to see the meaning behind those numbers. And so do we – behind those big numbers are stories that cause us to weep and pray for refugees and those under economic hardship, and cause us to celebrate faithful pastors and new members of God’s family. The gospel story also reminds us that Jesus expects us to feed people. We have been recruited into God’s bread business. And so we pack meals, serve fortified porridge, teach classes of children and anything else to feed the world God so loves. Today’s numbers are just the start!
Meals 721 Baptisms 20 Years 1.2 MIL Listeners
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COF MISSIONS UPDATE
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COF.CHURCH