As a church we aim to financially and prayerfully support the work of overseas mission as well as Christian work in our own country. Four specific families/organizations receive the bulk of this support.

They are –

• David and Lorna Ferguson working in Japan with OMF
• Dave and Jennifer Fearon living in France undergoing language study with WEC in preparation for mission work
• Open Doors – an organization seeking to support the persecuted church throughout the world
• Another family working in Morocco (they cannot be named for security reasons)

Church Christmas Card

For the last few years, we at Stranraer Baptist Church have organised a church Christmas Card, to replace all the cards which used to be passed amongst the members. It is very simple to do and the members of the congregation are asked to donate the money they would have spent on cards to a cause chosen by the church. This year we choose to support Tear Fund and especially their “Gift of Life” project to help people in Malawi, such as 13 year old Gloria, who are living with HIV /AIDS.

In the church entrance porch we set up a large screen to which we attach to A1 sized pieces of white card, 1 for the adults to sign and the other for the children. (Teenagers if they can be bothered (!) can choose which card they sign.) We print off 3 A4 sheets, the first announcing the card scheme, and also one is placed above each sheet of card indicating who should sign which card. Then in the middle of the screen we attach publicity from the Mission organisation and this year we had a large picture of Gloria’s lovely smiling face. Beside the screen their is a box into which people can put their donations.

All this was set up for Sunday 13th December and I had a 5 minute slot in the service that morning to speak about Tearfund’s Gift of Life Project and was able to download from the Tearfund website, and use, the powerpoint presentation which accompanied the project, to illustrate the talk. We also publicised the project each week in our Church Notices Bulletin.

This year with the material provided by Tearfund members of the congregation were able to take home a card, again with Gloria’s smiling face on the cover and also the “gift tag” part of the card could be used as a reminder, to pray for the work in Malawi and if they wanted they were also invited to write out their prayer and attach it to the Christmas Tree in the church so that others could share in their prayers.

We kept the card up in the church over the festive season and it was removed after church on Sunday 3rd January.

This year we raised £165 and a cheque for this amount is on its way to Tearfund.

- Niall

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