Alternative Christmas Gifts at Christ the King have become a giving tradition. The Global Mission Team receives your monetary gifts to purchase items for our Tanzanian partners in faith. In return you receive a simple Christmas ornament and card to give to someone important in your life.
When God is with us, our hearts overflow with joy at the many gifts He gives us, especially his Son, Jesus Christ. In turn, we want to be God-like. We want to share with others just as God shares with us. Especially at Christmas, we give gifts to others in our lives to share that joy. Sometimes the Global Mission Team finds others who are answering the same call, and we celebrate our shared causes. Recent collaborators have been Compassion International (2016), Feed My Starving Children (2017), and Global Health Ministries (2018, 2019). Our gifts to our Tanzanian partners and others through these partnerships impact people’s lives in many ways. Education is one of the greatest gifts we give; you will find secondary school scholarships, textbooks, and benches, cement, and paint for a new school library among our selections. A special education-themed gift, new this year, is a book titled “Among the Maasai”. Julie and Mark Cutler spent a year as missionaries in Tanzania early in their marriage. Now you can read the book Julie has written to describe her experiences educating girls from the Maasai tribe, including the lessons that she learned from them. Profits from her book will be donated to a Tanzanian school for the education and empowerment of Maasai girls. Health-based gifts include cancer medicine for the Jacobson Centre in Moshi, TZ, nursing scholarships, textbooks for the Arusha Lutheran Nursing School, and stethoscopes for nursing students. Newborn Kits, created in collaboration with Global Health Ministries, are used as an incentive for expectant mothers to participate in prenatal care and to deliver their babies at a health facility – safer for both mothers and babies! A new gift this year, soccer balls, encourage physical fitness and teamwork among Tanzanian children. Some of our gifts have an economic impact on Tanzanian families. A dairy goat, bee boxes supporting honey production, and seedling avocado and papaya fruit trees all provide both foods for a family and products for them to sell to others. Other trees, 100 at a time, will be planted together in orchards in the parish. They represent hope for a future with a healthy environment through reforestation. In Tanzania’s equatorial climate, trees enjoy a long growing season and mature quickly. Nduli Parish, our companion congregation, is filled with people of great faith. They take pride in the simple structures that serve their preaching points and use our gifts of supplies to be good stewards of their places of worship. One of our most popular gifts, year after year, is a Swahili Bible to be placed in the hands of a faithful believer. Stop and visit our sales table on Sunday mornings (December 1, 8, 15, and 22) to view our charming, unique ornaments. This year we are offering 16 different gifts, ranging in cost from $10 to $100. Click here to see our complete order form. Print it and bring your order to our table on Sunday morning. You can also pick up our form on Sunday mornings at our display, at the Welcome Center, or in the office. Global Mission Team members look forward to helping you select gifts for your giving season. Thank you for your support of Alternative Christmas Gifts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Global Mission Prayer: Oh God, we know that you are with us on our most joyful days and in our darkest moments. Thank you for sending Christ into this world to shine a radiant light into our lives. Let our Alternative Christmas Gifts brighten the lives of our Tanzanian companions, and let their joyful gratitude and generosity remind us how little else we need when we have you. Emmanuel! God is with us! Amen. Global Mission Events:
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The Christ the King community bread oven is just about open for business! With gratitude to the CtK foundation for making this possible, and to the dozens of volunteers who assisted in building the oven these past six months, the true fun of this bread oven ministry can now begin. Breads, pizzas, gatherings around this hearth - the possibilities for using this oven for fellowship and feeding are many. We hope you might be interested in playing a part someday in this ministry. For anyone interested in being involved, we will have an informational summit on Tuesday, November 26th, at 6:00 PM. Please let Pastor John know if you plan on attending. If you would like to be involved but cannot attend the meeting, let Pr. John know that as well.
Here are a few of the roles you might consider being a part of in the future: Bakers: This is the big one. The fun one. The tasty one. If you want to be notified of upcoming opportunities to mix dough, bake bread, throw pizza dough, or taste test, please let me know! If you have a bread recipe or sourdough starter you would like to share, we'd love to have it. Firewood Collectors and/or Splitters: We need a team of a few people who could periodically be called upon to collect orphaned firewood for future use in the oven. Do you have a pick-up truck or trailer? Do you have a wood splitter we could borrow? Let me know if you'd be open to receiving periodic requests for assistance in wood collection. Stokers: Do you like making fires? The oven needs to be stoked for many hours before it's ready for baking. Even if you can't commit to a shift of food preparation or cooking, we need a prep team who can light a fire and/or keep that fire going. Let me know if this sounds like something you'd love to do. Other Needs: We still need a plan (structure?) for long-term wood storage. We would love a pathway for easier access to the oven in the wintertime. Some beautification of the grounds around the oven slab could be a fun springtime project. Do one of these projects pique your interest? This past Sunday was Generosity Sunday, when we presented our annual intentions of giving (aka “Pledge Cards”) during worship, gathering these offerings as signs of our continued commitment to join in God’s mission in, with, and through Christ the King Lutheran Church. Thanks to all of you who so generously committed to another year of ministry. Your financial contributions—along with your significant offering of your time and energy—make ministry happen at CtK, and allow us both to care for one another and to reach out further into our community. Thank you all! While we did get a great number of you responding yesterday or before, it’s still too early to share the overall results of this annual generosity appeal. In the next few days, we’ll be contacting those members who haven’t yet returned their Pledge Card (if that’s you, and you want to avoid a call, pleased drop your Card off in the church office as soon as you can!), after which we’ll let you know how we did. From there, our generosity numbers will be matched up with our budget requests in order to begin building the 2020 Budget for Ministry which will be presented to the congregation well ahead of our Annual Meeting in February. But for now, we mostly want to show our gratitude. Thanks for being part of Life at CtK, and for providing and supporting our shared ministry. Thanks for praying for this congregation and its leaders. Thanks for sharing all you do with our congregation and community. Faithfully, Pastor Peter Thank you! ¡Gracias! Takk! Asante! Dank je!
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Christ the King Lutheran Church
1900 7th Street NW New Brighton, MN 55112 Phone: 651-633-4674 Email: [email protected] Office Hours: 9 am - 2 pm Mon - Thurs or by appointment Sunday Schedule Morning Worship at 9:30 am |