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We have begun our 2014-15 Thanksgiving Offering with $32,590.39 contributed during November. Last year’s Thanksgiving Offering total was $49,058.41, and it fell two months short of lasting through 2014. We are praying and hoping that many others of you are planning to contribute also.

We use the Thanksgiving Offering to fulfill the commitments we have made to our missionaries for all the other benefits and services that are not supplied from our Monthly General Fund Offerings. If the funds are not given to the Thanksgiving Offering, then we have to tell our missionaries over the course of the year that the funds are not available to give them the benefits that otherwise would have been granted. Please help us respond to their requests for help!

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2015 THANKSGIVING OFFERING

Philippians 4.19
And my God shall supply all your need
according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

We are in immediate need of your most generous Thanksgiving Offering…AT THIS MOMENT!

Matthew 6.8
…for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.

So, let me appeal to you on behalf of our missionaries – with all the wisdom and passion God will grant me – to respond to their needs with as generous a Thanksgiving Offering as God will enable you to give.

2 Corinthians 9.8
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you;
that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work…

Last year’s total Thanksgiving Offering was $49,058.41.  It was given over six months, but I assure you, that’s OK!  Your Thanksgiving Offering doesn’t have to be given during November!  In fact, it will remain open for as long as you need it to be open!

THE THANKSGIVING OFFERING SUPPLIES OUR MISSIONARIES’ OTHER NEEDS THAT ARE NOT SUPPLIED FROM YOUR MONTHLY GENERAL FUND OFFERINGS. 

Monthly General Fund Offerings
I know we have produced an attractive and informative brochure to explain how our Monthly General Fund Offering works.  It is entitled “Caring for those who care for the world” and is available in PDF form on our website and also by requesting paper copies from the Executive Secretary.  But, please allow me here to reiterate how we use your Monthly General Fund Offerings.  The Essential Maintenance Transactions [EMT] that provide for their most basic living and ministry expenses are supplied from your Monthly General Fund Offerings.  They include salary, housing and ministry expense allowances, hospitalization premiums, and Mission Sheets printing and distribution.

These total EMT disbursements add up to $43,300.54 every month.  Only one month in 2014 [January] was the Monthly General Fund Offering sufficient to cover these disbursements.  We supplied the following monthly deficits from February-March from the surplus received in January.

Extraordinary Estate Gift
Then, in April 2014, we supplied the deficit in the Monthly General Fund from the remaining portion of the extraordinary estate gift Ernest and Helen Palmer had left BFM in 2013.

Founders Day Offerings
By that time, you were giving your Founders Day Offerings from June through September.  The special contributions you made to the Founders Day Offering [in addition to your faithful regular giving to the Monthly General Fund] supplied our missionaries’ Essential Maintenance Transactions over the next four months.

I repeat, all of these every-month basic living and ministry expenses are not provided for from the Thanksgiving Offering; they are supplied from the Monthly General Fund Offerings.

And, in the event that the Monthly General Fund Offerings don’t cover those Essential Maintenance Transactions – and we don’t have other designated funds to use – then we must reduce those standard commitments we have made to the missionaries that month by the amount of the shortage of funds.  We had to enact that undesirable necessity in both November and December 2014.

BUT – THESE DISBURSEMENTS ARE NOT SUPPLIED FROM YOUR THANKSGIVING OFFERINGS.  Let’s get back to the Thanksgiving Offering now.  The Thanksgiving Offering supplies all the commitments and benefits we provide to our missionaries throughout the year in addition to the Essential Maintenance Transactions we have noted above.

Those benefits include:

• furlough transportation expenses,
• children’s education allowances,
• hospitalization deductible reimbursements,
• postage to mail the Mission Sheets,
• maintaining the Missionary Furlough Home in Lexington KY,
• and all the professional and legal services and supplies that are required to maintain all the activities that go on here in the States to keep their ministries going.

And, let me note here that in 2014, [1] we didn’t have the funds to disburse the Children’s Education Allowance benefit, and [2] we had missionaries who didn’t request reimbursement for their furlough transportation back to the States because they knew we didn’t have the funds.

AND SO – WE NEED THE THANKSGIVING OFFERING TO SUPPLY ALL THE OTHER COMMITMENTS, BENEFITS, AND SERVICES THAT ARE NOT SUPPLIED BY OUR MONTHLY GENERAL FUND OFFERINGS. I repeat, last year’s Thanksgiving Offering of $49,058.41 did not supply all the benefits we would have given during the year if we had received a larger Thanksgiving Offering – and what we did receive was exhausted before the end of the year.

Like Paul in 2 Corinthians 9, we are praying to God supply our needs with the means to give a generous offering – and also that He will plant and infuse the Grace into our hearts to give us the purpose, the willingness, and the joy to sow and reap bountifully [verses 6-8].

That is, after all, the way God Himself gives – and the way Christ gave Himself.

2 Corinthians 9.15
Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable Gift.

OUR MISSIONARIES’ MONTHLY DEPOSITS REDUCED IN NOVEMBER

First of all, we want to thank each and every one of you who contributes to the monthly General Fund offerings.  You are the ones who supply our missionaries’ essential needs each month to the degree we can fulfill them. 

If you are not contributing to the monthly General Fund offerings, please, may we encourage you for the sake of our missionaries’ essential support to begin doing so – as generously as you can?

Again, during the month of December [as alson in November], it was necessary to reduce the modest amounts we have committed to our missionaries each month for their essential maintenance.  The reason we had to do this is because our monthly General Fund support offerings were not sufficient to cover the full amounts of the modest disbursements we make to them each month for their salary and expense allowances.  So, when the General Fund offerings are not sufficient to cover those commitments, then we must reduce the amounts of the disbursements we deposit to each of their accounts.

So, the effect was – we had to proportionately reduce the amounts we deposited in each missionary’s account for their salary and housing/ministry expense allowances.  Our missionaries need and depend upon these modest commitments we make to their essential support needs each month – just like every one of us depends upon our basic essential income coming in regularly each month.

Please help us keep their monthly essential support supplied!

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HOW CAN I HELP OUR MISSIONARIES TO RECEIVE THEIR FULL FINANCIAL COMMITMENTS EACH MONTH?  Is it worth $1 a day?

Here is a simple way each one of us can help to assure that our missionaries receive the full measure of the already-modest commitments we have made to them each month.  We are talking here about the Essential Maintenance Transactions that provide for their most basic living and ministry expenses like salary, housing and ministry expense allowances, hospitalization premiums, and the printing and distribution of their monthly newsletters.

EACH ONE OF US CAN GIVE $1 A DAY TO WORLDWISE MISSIONS THROUGH THE MISSIONARIES WHO ARE FINANCED THROUGH BFM.  We realize that many of you are already personally giving way over that amount.  If you are, we thank you!  And our missionaries thank you!  You can see who are maintaining our missionaries’ essential monthly needs by going right now to the Contributions pages and look at GENERAL FUND offerings.

But, our missionaries have so many more friends than these who are listed there!  So, if you are not giving personally and regularly to the Baptist Faith Missions GENERAL FUND, then we encourage you to begin right now!

We can afford to give $1 a day – that is just $30 a month – to help our missionaries carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ into all the world.  We are talking about what we spend to get a cup of coffee at your local Speedway, convenience store, or McDonalds. Many of us probably spend more than $1 every day without even thinking about it on far more temporary and less valuable pleasures – we consume it in a moment, and it is gone!  When we give to finance our missionaries’ ministries, we are saving people for eternity – remember that!

You can give this offering a number of ways:  [1] You can give through your church’s monthly offerings to the General Fund by asking your pastor/treasurer to simply add your personal contribution amount to the church’s offering from their treasury.  [2] Or, you can give your offerings personally and directly by mailing your check to our Treasurer:  Pastor George Sledd, P.O. Box 471280, Lake Monroe FL 32747-1280.  [3] Or, simpler yet, you can go to our website www.baptistfaithmissions.org and click on the DONATE/SUPPORT page where you can give online by following the prompts.  You can give either a one-time gift, or you can contribute manually every month, or you can set up your contribution to be an automatically recurring gift.  “For the administration of this service not only supplies the needs of the saints, but also is abounding through many thanksgivings to God…” [2 Corinthians 9.12]

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KROGER COMMUNITY REWARDS