Missions Team Newsletter
March 2020
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." - Acts 1:8
Here are the latest ways your Missions Team has be serving in Texas and
beyond with the help of your prayer, giving, and going. We thank you for
your tireless support of missions and our many ministries. Make sure to contact
us if you have questions or need assistance with any missions needs.
EVENTS: POSTPONED OR CANCELED...

  • Missions Team / BOUNCE will continue to monitor the Coronavirus / COVID-19 pandemic. We are following the USA State department posts as well as information from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as having regular updates from field personnel in international and domestic locations. If, at any time, it is deemed unsafe to send a team to a particular location, we will work with your team to find another suitable USA or foreign location or another time period to serve. As a precaution, please wait to buy flights until contacting your Missions Team director for more information, and make sure to purchase flight insurance for all flights. All indications at this time are that it is still early to begin to pull teams from any of the locations to which we have upcoming mission trips due to the Coronavirus / COVID-19. Please stay in touch with the Missions Team contact you are working with for your mission project. Thank you.
TP Ministry
CHURCH STARTING - SEATTLE
Dwelling Place, Seattle is one of our Church Plants. The pastor, Wes Walls reported about one of the recent ministry opportunities they had living in their new normal of social distancing.

"One of our families lives in a densely populated part of Seattle where there are few grocery stores. The stores that are around them do not usually keep the stash of toilet paper that is now in demand which means that our friends were running out of their household necessities quickly.

"We speak often about 'sharing our lives' and how the outflow of a life saturated with the gospel means to give to one another as Jesus gives to us, but that lifestyle has never been fully expressed-until now. Many of the people of our church offered (and delivered) their own prized toilet paper to make sure one family was supplied for the next week.

"It is a simple act, with a profound message. We are grateful to experience that what the Spirit did among believers in Acts 2 he would also do in March of 2020, but I would have never guessed that toilet paper would be what we 'shared.' It goes without saying that the TP is not what (ultimately) matters, but what the Spirit is doing in the hearts of his people makes them joyfully share their (precious) goods and tells a story to our not-yet-believing friends about what abundant life in Jesus really looks like."

Contact Tom Howe, Director of Church Starting to get involved with one of our Church Plants. Click here.
Repaint House
SPRING BREAK BOUNCE
Over 150 students and leaders spent their Spring Break restoring communities in Waco, TX. This included students and leaders from eight Texas Baptists Churches across Texas.

Meadowbrook Baptist Church in Robinson, TX, hosted the ministry teams, providing lodging, meals and space for evening worship so that students and leaders could recharge. Carlos Montoya, associate pastor at the South Oaks Campus of Fielder Church in Arlington, TX, preached and Ty and Madison McAllister of Fort Worth led worship.

Using materials generously provided by Grassroots Community Development, a Waco-based non-profit with a mission to build healthy neighborhoods, 11 BOUNCE ministry teams constructed and installed wheelchair ramps, steps and porches. They also completed siding repairs and painting projects. 

Over two days of service, BOUNCE ministry teams reached four neighborhoods across Waco with 13 home repairs, nine spiritual conversations and 33 additional acts of kindness such as yard cleaning and lawn mowing. 


For information on how you can mobilize students for meaningful mission service and inspiring times of worship visit txb.org/bounce. There are still great mission options for this summer.
Mission Project
Seedlings
We Still Need Seeds:
While many of our River Ministry Missionaries are also practicing social distancing, they are starting to plant seeds to begin their Community Gardens. Your small group or church still has time to send seeds to help our River Ministry Missionaries plant community gardens this Spring that will help break down barriers to communicate the gospel.

Click here to print a list of seeds that are needed. Contact Gloria.Tillman@txb.org for where to send your seeds if you are near the border or elsewhere. We can still take your seeds. Thanks!
Houston Hospital
RIVER MINISTRY
Silvia not only serves with River Ministry but works with a hospital in Houston as a Chaplain. She has been endorsed by our TXB Chaplaincy office.
She shared with our River Ministry Missionaries, “I had shared previously that [the hospital] offered me extra work during this time of the epidemic and that I refused to work because my husband did not want me to be exposed to the virus. I told them that I could not be calm [at home] and the Lord moved me to accept the job.
Today I worked for the first time in this crisis and realized why the Lord moved me to do it. Apart from the patients, I was talking to all the hospital staff, giving hope and trust in the Lord. I saw smiles and heard stories of fear and hopelessness, but they received words of hope and encouragement from the Lord. The Lord has his ways of calling us to the fields, for such a time as these.” 

Contact Mario Gonzalez for more information about Mario.Gonzalez@txb.org for more information on how to help our River Ministry Missionaries in their current ministries.
Small Group
RIVER MINISTRY
Jonatan holds a free medical clinic every month that also includes free meals, haircuts, and other physical needs. They call these medical brigades. Professionals of all types, local churches, and mission teams come to help with these missions and they usually minister to hundreds of people during one weekend. Each person they see also hears about God’s love for them. Many also leave with a new Bible, and may never have had one before. 

Jonatan reported March 25, “We will not be having a medical brigade this month due to the restrictions of our cities [because of COVID-19] ... we are already entering phase two.

Instead, this Saturday we will be visiting homes bringing groceries to families in need and evangelizing. Please I ask for your Prayers. Thanks and regards.”

Just like many other ministries, Jonatan is trying to find a way to continue to minister to those in need and meet their physical and spiritual need. Pray for this ministry and pray for the teams health and strength during this time. 

Contact Mario Gonzalez for more information about Mario.Gonzalez@txb.org for more information on how to help our River Ministry Missionaries in their current ministries.
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E-Training
TXB E-TRAINING
Want more information on E-Training with MinistryGrid, and how Texas Baptists Churches can get this great training tool for free?

Email danilo.vieira@texasbaptists.org for more information on this great ministry tool and how you can be involved.
Soundside
MISSIONARY ADOPTION PROGRAM (MAP)
Aaron Carpenter is a MAP Missionary, and is a Church Planter and pastor at Soundside Church in Tacoma, WA. Her reports, "At the end of February, our church hosted our first dodgeball tournament at the elementary school where we are hoping to plant a second church in the future. We didn’t get quite as much response from that school community as we did the previous year when we hosted one at another school, but we got a much higher level of parental involvement. Also, we received a much higher level of appreciation. We don’t do this for the appreciation, but we were very encouraged to see the potential inroads that God is making into this community through simple events like this.

We used the event to promote a new sermon series on the Family, as well as to advertise a Kids Camp scheduled for August. At the moment, the Family series is being done online, and I’m not sure of the status of the Kids Camp. Like everyone else, we’re scrambling. Please pray for us as we look for ways to leverage and build off of what was a very successful initial event."

To learn how to partner with MAP Missionaries like Aaron, and with missionaries in another country, click here .
Mtg to Install detectors
CHURCH STARTING
Iglesia Bautista Fellowship joined with the Red Cross to install smoke alarms in the community around the church. 

The community around the IBF has had several fires in the last couple of years. The fire department felt two deaths that occured could have been avoided if there had been smoke alarms installed in the homes. IBF contacted the Red Cross to see if it was possible to install free smoke alarms in the homes...the answer was yes. After some training on how to install the alarms and how to create an escape plan, and where to meet as a family, a date was set. 

On Feb 1, 2020 the Chapel Hills volunteer fire department, along with Smith County fire department, 10 Boys Scouts, 25 IBF members (who helped with translation), and some other 50 volunteers, we went out into the community to install the alarms. At the end of the event there were 110 alarms installed in 65 homes. The church provided a meal for all the people that participated in this event. The event has encouraged other churches to do the same in their community. 

Iglesia Bautista Fellowship is also partnering with Chapel Hill ISD School Nutrition Department to provide FREE curbside meal pickup on March 23- April 3rd for the students that attend the Chapel Hill ISD.

We are proud of our Church Plants that are able to serve their communities in these exciting ways!

Email Tom.Howe@txb.org for more information on how you and your church can be involved in Church Planting ministry.
Look up to the Hills
MULTI-HOUSING
In the midst of uncertainty, there is peace and rest to be had when we look to our Lord. Texas Baptists have been posting scriptural truths such as the one above for us to meditate on this week on their social media pages to help us to pray for healing in our churches, state, nation, and world.

Many of our churches have already seen more people join their online services than would normally attend an average in person service. Jerry Joule, who pastors one of our House Churches, has seen just that.

"The cool thing about house church is that being pushed online was not much of a change. In fact it has given us a greater reach as people are wanting to hear from the Lord. So we have had new people joining us from around the state to listen to the word."

What a testament of God's power and love for people than to help the church to move online and have easy access to people all across the world. Continue to pray for Jerry Joule and other House Church leaders who may be bi-vocational or co-vocational and may have lost their other job because of Coronavirus / COVID-19.

Want to know more about the ministry of Multi-housing and the House Church movement? Contact Paul.Atkinson@txb.org for more information on how to be involved.
PRAY FOR MISSIONS
First we want to thank the  Texas Baptists Missions Foundation (TBMF) for their work in helping to fund the Missions Team, along with church gifts to the Cooperative Program  and the  Mary Hill Davis Offering  for Texas Missions. Your gifts through each of these and direct gifts to the Missions Team make it possible for everything you read above and more! If you don't currently support the Missions Team monetarily, consider contacting TBMF through the link above to learn how to do so. All gifts are tax deductible.

The best way to effectively support all of our mission endeavors is through prayer. Your prayers DO make an impact on ministry! 

[Texas Baptists Missions]  [888.244.9400]  [ txb.org/missions ]