Poster - Worship Slides

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This month we want to tell you more about the “God’s Grace for this Generation” program of LAMP Ministry, Inc., recipients of a $100,000 grant from Lutheran Women’s Missionary League (LWML) in the 2019–2021 biennium.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.1 Peter 2: 9–10

For nearly fifty years, LAMP Ministry, Inc., has ministered in northern Canada, where many villages are reachable only by aircraft or seasonal roads. Currently, nearly one million indigenous people live in these isolated areas with about half under the age of fourteen. The most alarming statistic is that over fifteen percent of these children and youth will take their own lives out of despair and hopelessness.

Faced with the worldly influences and challenges of the internet and social media, and with limited opportunities for education and employment, the children and youth often feel despondent and discouraged. Sunday school, Christian youth programs and regular worship services are rarely available. Parents and grandparents of this younger generation were raised in residential schools away from home and the traditional family structure is non-existent. The younger generation lacks a sound model for parenting and family life.

On the Indian reserves, employment is limited, housing is limited, violence and drug abuse is higher than in most of the world and life expectancy is between 45 and 55 years. LAMP goes into these communities offering the love of Jesus through parenting workshops, bereavement care training, VBS, Bible studies and their testimonies of the hope found through faith in Jesus. The goal is to provide these communities with Christian education and witness to the Gospel.

To fulfill their mission of sharing the Gospel in the next few years, LAMP will need to expand their staff of full-time missionaries to four or five and recruit and train 100 to 200 more volunteer missionaries committed to serve at least five years. This grant will provide funds to help LAMP reach the goal of hiring more missionary pilots and training more volunteers so that more communities can be reached with the love of Jesus and can be visited more than once a year. As the Gospel, our true source of comfort and hope, is proclaimed, local leaders are encouraged and built up to serve their own people. With the help of the Holy Spirit, the youth, knowing they are loved and cared for by the missionaries, will choose hope in Christ over suicide.

Lutheran Women's Missionary League (LWML) is the official women’s auxiliary of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Since 1942, the LWML has focused on affirming each woman’s relationship with Christ, encouraging and equipping women to live out their Christian lives in active mission ministries and by supporting global missions. For more information on each month’s mission focus, visit LWML.org. Saint John’s Mission Guild (LWML) meets the first Tuesday of each month at 10:30 AM in Room 301. All ladies of the congregation are invited to attend.