Philippines and Operation Christmas Child

Praise God for our new NEA collection center! It is going to be at First Free Will Baptist on Stadium in Jonesboro! Kevin Barnett and Kathie Kinard will be the co-coordinators.  

This week we are asking you to pray for the Philippines. The Philippians are made up of 7,250 islands, over 700 of them are inhabited; 11 islands contain the bulk of the population. 11% of the population is unreached people groups. Only 12% of the total population is Evangelical Christian.  House Churches are being planted but growth is slow due to Muslim influence. The total population is over 93,600,000 people. 

- Praise God for the millions of Bibles that are translated and distributed each year and that His Word will make a deep and lasting impact on lives. 

- Praise God for enabling the team to reach the unreached people groups, including the Mandaya Tribe and the Kalagan tribe in Mindanao and Mindoro, through the shoebox distributions.

- Praise God the NLT, sRLTs, and RLTs are each functioning in their own roles, but are still working interdependently and serving in unity. 

- Praise God for the increased number of volunteers on the sRLTs and the difference they are making for Jesus.

- Praise God for the TGJ trainings, from the Train the Trainers to the teacher trainings, which were completed in all three major islands. 

- Praise Him that TGJ classes have reached new islands.

- Pray for the recruitment and selection processes of candidates for the vacant positions on the NLT and RLTs.

- Pray the teams will be able to adjust to the delays in receiving the training materials and will still be able to complete the trainings by their target dates. 

- Pray for the ongoing TGJ classes- pray more children will grow in the Word of God and that the teachers will lead the classes with compassion and love. 

- Pray for the remaining distributions. 

- Pray for the safety of the volunteers, partners, and teachers as they travel to remote areas for these distributions. 

- Pray for upcoming travel for the vision castings, MP trainings, TGJ training, recruitments, and interviews of potential volunteers.

 - Lastly, pray OCC will do abundantly more in 2015!!! 

Indonesia Operation Christmas Child

Praise God for the progress OCC has made in 2015. The rest of this week pray God will open doors for OCC to reach the unreached people groups in Indonesia.  Shoebox gifts collected in the United States in 2014 will be delivered to 79,286 children in Indonesia. Praise God that over 1,246,400 children have received a shoebox since 2000, when Operation Christmas Child began distributing gifts here.

• Indonesia has 253.6 million people and is located in Southeast Asia
• 26% of the population is 14 years old or younger

- Praise God for providing the financial resources needed to carry out the project in Indonesia.

- Praise God for the successful clearance of the containers and for  the boxes that are ready to be distributed.

- Praise God for the Teacher Trainer Trainings held in February. 

- Pray all of the participants will be encouraged and equipped fully to train more teachers. 

- Pray that more TDW training can be held and that OCC will be able to disciple more children as a result. (TDW is The Discipleship Workbook-same as The Greatest Journey but used in sensitive countries) 

- Pray for the completion of the sRLTs and RLTs. Pray God will open doors to establish teams in new areas and that He will send the right people to serve on these teams. 

- Pray for the existing sRLT and RLTs. (Regional Leadership Team)

- Pray God will equip them to accomplish their tasks well this season.

- Pray God provides more committed Ministry Partners who have a heart for children and want to support OCC full-heartedly.

"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up." (Galatians 6:9 ESV)