GMO 2021 to Declare His Glory among the Nations
The IBC’s 2021 Global Missions Offering will go to help people in three different nations – Brazil, Rwanda, and Haiti. In doing so, we will help to “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples” (Psalm 96:3).
IBC Missions: Touching Lives in Rwanda
Forty percent of the offering is for IBC Missions, and this year is going towards touching lives in Rwanda. This project, led by Pastor Richmond Ofori of Hope International Bible and Missions Church in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, focuses mainly on helping single parents who are survivors of the 1994 genocide, now living in Butare, Rwanda. Assistance is provided in agriculture, bakery training, children’s education, and the local hospital. The project’s vision is that the people, mostly women, will cultivate self-reliance and provide a better future for their children and community. Since the beginning of the project in 2017, nearly 90% of the 53 women attend their local churches instead of worshipping other gods – a very common practice especially when families are experiencing hardship. For more information, see ibc-churches.org/gmo-rwanda.
IBC Aid: Stand with Haiti
Thirty percent of the offering is for IBC Aid, and this year it is going to some of the people of Haiti – hit first with the August 2021 7.2-magnitude earthquake, followed only days later by torrential rains from Tropical Storm Grace. All of this is happening in a politically challenging context in which the nation’s president was assassinated only a month before. Nevertheless, Haitian pastors and leaders are resilient, working tirelessly to assess damages, procure food and shelter items, and to provide pastoral care in their communities. The IBC is helping to support the Baptist World Alliance’s aid efforts in the country. For more information, see baptistworld.org/haiti.
Partnerships: EBMI Project: Pomeranians
In the bleak part of the mountainous area of the state Espirito Santo, Brazil, live approximately 120,000 descendants of the German Pomeranians in great poverty and with no perspective. They are heavily influenced by superstition and the occult. Up to today, they speak their Pomeranian dialect, and some of them hardly speak any Portuguese at all.
Valério and Sandra Kurth, of Pomeranian descent themselves, are passionately working to reach their own ethnic group. The Kurths and three other pastor couples have formed a network to strengthen the church planting and to make it more effective. They want to plant churches in still unreached places in creative ways. They are sharing the good news with people through the radio and by spreading DVDs and CDs with evangelistic movies and messages in their own language. This initiative is proving quite effective.
The Pomeranians are a closed group and do not accept new things easily. When people do find faith in Christ, their lives are being changed completely and radically. And people see the changes in their lives and begin to ask questions about their new life.
For more information, see https://www.ebm-international.org/en/2018/06/06/mission-work-among-people-of-pomeranian-descent/.
