Sponsor Appreciation Luncheon by Tim Neet

Jan 2014
Last week you should have received an Evite to our upcoming Project Child - Sponsor Appreciation Luncheon. It will be held on Feb 9 just after the second service (12:30 PM) in the new Perimeter Ministry Center underneath the Chapel. It would be so great to see you there, where we could be afforded the simple pleasure of saying thanks. Thanks for your willingness to help a young boy or girl in Tanzania have a Christ centered education that they never could have afforded. Thanks for praying for each of them and their families, and for praying for every element of the school. Thanks for teams who have gone and played with the children, met parents, and served the PUNCHMI School and the Church. We are so thankful that God spoke into your hearts to help. And if you are not yet a sponsor, we still want to thank you for your interest in Project Child. You do not have to be a sponsor to join in the luncheon celebration. My wife and I were recently reading through the letter that Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus. Chapter 2 verses 8 and 9 are well known to many as the writer Paul reminds us For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. While we celebrate having been saved, we should also know that we have been saved for a purpose. One purpose is to certainly glorify God, now and for eternity. One way we do that is by living out His will for our lives. As Paul continues in his writing of verse 10 he says For we are Gods handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good ular good work, way back, from the beginning of time. Your life has been designed to intersect with a childs life. We give thanks for all of you who have heard that call, who see Gods hand working in your lives, and see how he has prepared you from the beginning of time to meet the need of one or more of our kids. Please let me know if you cannot find or open the EVITE to our luncheon that we sent to you, but you would like to come. We will break bread together over a nice dinner of Lemon Chicken plus share stories and videos from the Village of Karansi and PUCNHMI School. You can bring a letter for your child, or write one while at lunch plus we will take a photo of you and your family that we will soon have carried back to Tanzania and your child. Lunch should start at 12:30 PM and the program will conclude by 2PM. If you can not make it or live far away please know that we still give thanks for you to our Heavenly father. If you have a specific questionsthat you would like for us to address during the Program, please let me know at the following email: timneet@att.net If you can come, please send us your reservation so that we have enough seats and food.

Tanzania Journal Issue 45

works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. I sincerely believe that each and every child sponsor is directly fulfilling one part of this verses promise. You have been selected by God to do his will, to see his Kingdom come on earth, even now, as it is in Heaven. I am not saying that every believer should sponsor one of our children I mean really, we only have 400. But I do believe that God has prepared and equipped some specific believers to do this partic-

Mail Call
Mail Call Write your letters at the Sponsor Appreciation Luncheon or get them to us no later than Feb 7. We are hoping to have them carried back to Tanzania by our partners who will be in town the week of Feb 10. Due to limited room we will again restrict to letters, cards and photos only. See the March 2013 issue of TZJournal for ideas about writing your child.

Father to the Fatherless by Trey Reed

(The following article was written by Trey Reed. Trey and his mother, Lanee, were on our first Family Ministry Team to Tanzania back in 2004. (photo right) Although barely a teenager, through this experience God placed a mark on Treys life that has shaped him into adulthood. From Tanzania Trey now serves orphans in South Korea while studying Korean at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. I remember riding with Trey in a Safari vehicle across the basin of the Ngorongoro Volcano Crater when we came upon three lionesses laying in a creek bed with a herd of small gazelles nearby. Trey asked me if the gazelles knew the lions were so close to them, and I told him that the gazelles could tell that the lions had recently eaten and had nothing to fear. Immediately after that the three lions jumped up and took down a gazelle for dinner. Trey looked at me and said something like You have a lot to learn. We all have a lot to learn about Gods heart for the orphan, the widow and the poor, and there is much that we can learn from them too. Tanzania is a great learning ground for families Tim Neet) and the widow.

(Seoul, South Korea)

Korea has ridiculous adoption laws involving abandoned and handicapped children that make them completely unadoptable by anybody internationally or domestically. It seems wherever you are in the world, orphans and widows are there also, living without tasting compassion and justice. How unbelievably horrible is that? Satan laughs at this.

I can remember stepping off of the plane when we arrived in Arusha, TZ. The smell was nothing like I had smelled before. It was

Trey and his Mother Lanee2004 When I was 12 or 13, I made my first journey to Tanzania. God had put a burden on my heart for missions and loving others. My mother and I both had a desire for this so we chose Tanzania. We had a sponsor child there, and who could resist the opportunity to cross the ocean to exotic Africa in order to go play with dozens of cute African children and let that be a means by which you share the Gospel. It is sure easier than street preaching or trying to explain what Paul means by "a slave to the law." It was such a good experience that its affects still linger on me today and will continue in the future. In fact, it was in Tanzania that God branded my heart with a burning love for the fatherless

From a widow's struggle to care for many children with no support from family or income, to seeing orphans younger than I literally dying slowly of the AIDS virus, God has used to press firmly in my heart Isaiah 1:17 which says "Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause." So in the a dry, cool grassy smell. Not a lot of smog midst of all of this there is hope for the opand car fumes like Atlanta and not sewage pressed. It could not possibly be more clear and kimchi like Seoul, South Korea. I get a that we as the body of Christ should be easimilar smell in the countryside during the gerly and fervently pursuing justice and comlate summer, here in Korea, when they burn passion for these people; the helpless. We off the rice for next season's harvest; it really should love them as Jesus has loved us and takes me back to that place and time in Afri- tell them of the God that says that he ca. I remember the bumpy roads and crazy "Upholds the widow and the fatherless." driving. I can remember the mud huts that Psalms 146:9. The same God that upheld my people called homes, that at the time, I could mother and I for over 22 years of being not believe. I remember the children running without my earthly father. How unbelievably away at the site of Wazungu (white people), wonderful is that? God's love and provision laughing in a nervous yet fun way and then sustain. Evil loses. showing up later to play with the some of the God has used my time in Tanzania to spark a girls' straight, not black hair. The thing I remember the most though was the unbeliev- chain of events in my life that would eventually bring me to South Korea that was totally able amount of poverty and lives broken by death and abandonment. I don't have to name unrelated to mercy and justice. But it was statistics, because we all already know that here that God has been stoking the fire for the HIV/AIDS virus is the number one wid- justice and compassion to the helpless once ow and orphan maker in Africa; whether again in my heart. While I don't know where through death or rejection because of the stigma that the virus carries. A rejection that my road in Korea will continue to lead, or where God will take me next, I know my causes families to outcast widows and children because of a disease that often they had work, my passion and my heart will always no control over whether they received it. It is be with the oppressed, the widow and the a rejection that leaves children homeless and orphan. I want to bring to them the same widows struggling to provide so their chilmessage of hope that my mother and I had; dren don't starve. How unbelievably horrible the good news of Jesus Christ. is that. Satan dances to this. Korea has a similar pattern of rejection of their diseased, disabled, unwanted or marked (literally red skin blemishes called Mongolian spots) babies. These children grow up never knowing a parental love and in most cases never knowing their Heavenly Father, who has his hands wide for adoption! Its sad that even in a country as developed as Korea, this still happens, but there are now hundreds of babies abandoned each year and many illegally aborted in secret. To add to that

Further information about PROJECT CHILD is on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdBudsHKB4Q Or email timneet@att.net LIKE us on Facebook at Project ChildTanzania