Dear Sponsors, Supporters, and Friends of ACTS,
Merry Christmas! We are grateful to God for each of you and your generous heart toward “the least of these” in Ethiopia. Because of your giving many of the children and their parents are coming to know and follow Jesus.
At this blessed time of year when we are celebrating our Savior’s birth, many of you have asked how you might get a Christmas gift to your ACTS Kid(s). As you might imagine, getting gifts for 400 children transported to Ethiopia would be quite a task and we have learned individual gifts can unintentionally create division which replaces love with jealousy for those who do not receive a gift. We appreciate your hearts to want to do something special in honor of our King who has done so much for us. Going forward we will focus on enhancing love by giving towards the family or community. As food is so critical in this country stricken by famine, would you consider a special monetary donation earmarked for providing a special Christmas dinner? The birthday of our Savior falls on January 7 on the Ethiopian calendar. Three persons from ACTS leadership will be leaving for the villages on January 3 and will orchestrate the delivery of the gift.
A team of eight visited the Koshe Village in October where many of our sponsored children live. Despite confronting several obstacles, the team taught sewing lessons to some of the
women of the village, played with and prayed for the children. Ten sewing machines were left in the village so the dress making can continue.
Shoes we had previously collected and sent were a big hit as many children are without footwear. Any monies that are collected for the Christmas meal beyond what is needed for the feeding will be used to purchase additional shoes.
As you know we sponsor 400 children in two villages: Koshe (225 children) and Woja (145 children). We received photographs of the new Koshe School and the leadership team hopes to see the completion. Electricity is in and the walls are being plastered. The old school’s walls were made of mud and while there will still be overcrowding by our standards, can you imagine what a better learning environment we are now providing?
Now we can turn our attention to building the school in the Woja village. In January we hope to witness firsthand the groundbreaking for this school. We are very close to our goal of raising the necessary funds. We ask you to join us in seeing the hope of a school building in the Woja become reality. Also, the team will put into place an appropriate local administrative structure to support this growing ministry and explore strengthening the school curriculum.
Several of you have expressed an interest in visiting Ethiopia to meet your children and to offer assistance in the exciting work that is taking place there. The January team will be laying the groundwork on their trip for a spring return for a larger group. This group may find itself helping to build the Woja school or working on improving the water supply and quality. Maybe we will have included in our group some who will be able to help with nutrition training or with improving agricultural practices. We are an infant organization working in an extremely impoverished area and there is much to do with few resources. But we are making an impact and increasingly, people are finding hope. Not so much hope in what we can do for them, but hope that only comes from and understanding and faith in Jesus who has called us to these villages and who, we trust, will provide what we need. Please pray for the January trip and about whether you are being called to join us in the spring. If you determine that it is His will that you take this step of faith into this mission field, please email us at karen@actskids.org so that we may plan accordingly.
Each day the children of Ethiopia face uncertainty in many areas of their lives including safety, health, and hunger. Around the world 30,000 children’s lives are lost daily due to malnutrition or from preventable diseases. Your efforts and involvement with ACTS are making a difference in this small corner of the world and more importantly, you are giving the opportunity for the lost to come to know and to accept Jesus as their Lord.
Thank you for your continued support and contributions. As an alternative to sending checks, you may choose to donate on-line by going to www.actskids.org and clicking on “donate”. Follow the instructions that will take you to Just Give. Navigating through that website is straightforward including the ability to make the gift recurring and/or to designate the purpose of a particular donation. A 4.5% transaction fee is charged by Just Give on donations made this way and you may print your own tax receipts off of this website.
May you be blessed this Christmas season by our generous Father who gave his One and only Son. How can we repay a God who gave so much? There is nothing we can give that equals to what we have received. The best we can do is to be poor imitators of God by loving and giving to people with whom Jesus identified himself. In Matthew 25 Jesus called the hungry, thirsty, strangers, sick, those who needed clothes and those in prison, “brothers of mine” and told us “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Matt 25:40)
In the name of our King who deserves all honor and praise,
The Servants of ACTS