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Barb Wooler

LEMONS Lite for Kids

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“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” — Jesus (John 16:33)

Indeed, most of us have certainly had our share of “trouble” lately! How are the children you are caring for handling life in “covid times”? If you are a parent or grandparent, a teacher or school administrator, a pastor, or just someone who cares about kids, you have probably seen some of the struggles children are having trying to understand and adjust to the huge changes that life has dealt them lately.

How can we help them? How can we disciple our children to be overcomers in life’s hardships without scaring them? That’s what LEMONS is all about. Each of LEMONS’ eight fun lessons provides a practical tool that kids between 3rd – 6th grade will remember and be able to start using immediately.

LEMONS is now available in two formats, and both are offered to you at no cost:

  1. LEMONS – the original full curriculum that provides teachers what they need to teach the eight lessons (released in September 2019).
  2. LEMONS Lite – an abbreviated version is now being released that allows kids to stream the lessons on their own (no instructor needed).

Find out more about this and other resiliency resources at www.encompasscrisisresponse.org/resources.

Isn’t it great to have a fun and effective tool to help us prepare our kids for the “troubles” that are sure to come in their life?

Webinar: Emotional First Aid in Covid-19 Times

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Do you find yourself wondering what to say to help people struggling to process life during this COVID-19 pandemic? Encompass World Partners is offering an online workshop to help. The “Emotional First Aid for Covid-19 Times” webinar equips participants with simple, easy-to-use tools they can use immediately to help people feeling stressed and wounded.

Presented by Encompass’ Director of Crisis Response Barb Wooler and Family Counselor Drew Waggoner, this material is one part of a fuller 11-hour Emotional First Aid Workshop they and their team are making available to individuals and churches in the Charis Fellowship.

This interactive training will prepare you to help people address fear and anxiety through key questions, listening, biblical truth, and the power of a new perspective. Join us as we learn together to care for people who are hurting during this global crisis.

WEBINAR TITLE: Emotional First Aid for COVID-19 Times            

DATE/TIME: April 14, 2020 // 7PM – 9PM EDT

The virtual workshop will take place via video conference on Zoom. You will receive a link to the Zoom meeting after you register. Use this link (https://emotionalfirstaidforcovid-19.splashthat.com) to register. Limit 50 participants, but we will be offering another event if the capacity is met.

Nashville Tornado Team Deployed

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Though most knew that anything might happen on Super Tuesday, residents of Nashville never expected to wake up that Tuesday morning, March 3, to the devastation of an F3 tornado!

This team! These gals and guys! They did all this work, clearing debris and felled trees from homes, cars and yards – a monumental task that can only be fully appreciated by folks who have themselves onetime stepped out of their homes after a storm to find their properties in a similar state.

It took Grace Fellowship (Pickerington, Ohio) just four days to pull together and deploy this team to the greater Nashville area eight hours away. There they served as only the Church can, offering more than just muscle and sweat, but also much-needed words of hope so desperately needed in the wake of disasters.

Are you or your church interested in joining a future disaster response team? Contact Encompass Crisis Response [CrisisResponse@encompassworld.org] to subscribe to updates, making you among the first to know about responses being planned.

So hats off to Grace Fellowship for their super quick response to serve people in need of help!

 

 

It’s A Wonderful Life

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If you have never heard Barb Wooler’s story, you may want to check out Grace College’s recently released interview available on their website.

Barb’s ministry story starts among the Bayaka Pygmy people in the Central African Republic, continuing to the present where she serves as Director of Crisis Response for Encompass World Partners, with ministry “stops” along the way in orphan and widow care, literacy and writing, and even some medical work.

Clearly, Barb has not had much opportunity through these years for boredom as her story is being written! Check out the 40-minute interview at Grace.edu.

Puerto Rican Trauma Workers Serving Earthquake Victims

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Few things are more emotionally disruptive than earthquakes. The earth is just not supposed to move, thus all the metaphors that relate the earth with stability and surety, such as “rock solid,” “solidly grounded,” “bedrock principles,” for example.

Earthquakes have left an estimated 5,000 homeless in Puerto Rico
Photo Courtesy of NBC News

Since December 28, 2019, the island of Puerto Rico has experienced an estimated 500 earthquakes of magnitude 2 or above. And since the big one at 6.4 on December 28, they have had major earthquakes and tremors of magnitude 4 and over every day. As a result, people are sleeping outside their homes for fear of a big one coming through the night and bringing their houses down on them.

Thankfully, we were able to help a team of four Puerto Ricans receive training in Trauma Care, and they are on the ground and helping. After the initial 6.4 earthquake struck on January 7, the team made an initial trip to assess needs. They are heading back into the area in the southwest corner of the island, to distribute initial relief supplies and provide emotional first aid from January 17-19.

PRAY for this team of trained trauma workers as they go to distribute relief supplies, to sit with, listen to, and draw out earthquake victims, and, of course, to pray with them.

Kerns Launch Into Two-Month Special Assignment

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Steve and Celeste Kern landed in Birmingham, England, and are doing “smashingly” well, as the Brits would put it. But then, living and serving abroad is nothing new for the Kerns, who served with Encompass in Germany for 6 years back in the 90’s.

Top: the Kerns with Bill & Beckie Kiddoo
Middle: Friendship Community Centre for migrants and refugees
Bottom: Kerns with Encompass’ Jason & Crystal Horner

WHO ARE THE KERNS & WHAT IS THEIR ASSIGNMENT?
Meet the Kerns and hear their heart for outreach to refugees in this 3-min video by their sending church: Grace Church, Wooster, Ohio.

They are on assignment with Encompass World Partners, researching refugee ministries in four locations around the globe including Birmingham, UK; Stuttgart, Germany; and two other locations that are better unnamed. They are in search of keys to ministry among migrants and refugees that will facilitate making disciples and planting churches.

FIRST FORAYS
Steve and Celeste have found the Pakistanis and other migrants they’ve encountered to be very open. After their first week they write,

“It is interesting and fun to begin to forge relationships with store and cafe owners, and we have seen how the Lord has gone before to prepare our hearts and theirs. How often do you meet a cafe manager of another faith and are able to have a 20 minute conversation at first meeting? How often do you meet the store manager and he tells you his journey in the store since 2003 and about the recent new management and his struggles? We are daily engaging with people from England, Pakistan, Sudan, and many other countries.”

Celeste has already taken opportunities to connect with women through cooking at the Friendship Community Center (see photo) where Bill and Beckie Kiddoo (Encompass staff) connect with migrants. Bill has developed an English outreach called, “Speaking Allowed,” where folks come to improve their English.

JOIN THEM IN PRAYER
Pray for the Kerns as they continue their research and connect with refugees and migrants. Pray that:

  • God gives them eyes to see and minds to discern the best way to help and bless these people.
  • their efforts strengthen Encompass workers in their passion to make disciples and plant churches among refugees and migrants populations.

An African Very Merry Christmas

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Your generosity this year has made YOU my heroes. Truly! Without your giving, we would have no material supply to add to the spiritual care that our local church partners on the ground are dispensing to people in crisis.
You. Are. My. Heroes.
A VERY MERRY AFRICAN CHRISTMAS. . .
This year’s Christmas Gift project is for 4 projects in the Central African Republic (CAR) – a part of the body of Christ that has suffered so much in 2019 from war, civil strife, and poverty.
We offer these giving options realizing that there are many amazing charitable ways you can give this Christmas. Should you so choose to give with us, know that your gift will help make 2020 brighter than 2019 was for many Central Africans.

Preparing Our Children for the Lemons of Life

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Are your children and grandchildren ready to face a world increasingly hostile to them and to the faith you are working so hard to instill in them? If current statistics are true, and young adults are indeed leaving their faith behind with their childhood, the Church needs something in its arsenal to strengthen our children and youth. And this is what LEMONS is all about.

LEMONS is a new curriculum for “tweeners” – 4th through 6th graders – kids who are starting to face some pretty powerful “lemons” in their lives. From forces such as broken homes, bullying, increasing sense of isolation from too much screen time, and heightening anxiety and depression from all the many compelling voices of their culture giving conflicting information about where to find truth.

[2-minute LEMONS promotional video.]

This fun 8-session curriculum is designed to help kids make lemonade out of the inevitable lemons that are coming their way in life. These lessons were built on a strong framework of biblical principles and emotional health best practices, and informed by interviews with gifted and experienced children’s ministry leaders who understand kids today.

WHERE TO USE LEMONS

LEMONS curriculum will fit great into any space that welcomes a theology of suffering and a biblical worldview:

  • Sunday School
  • Christian school
  • Release Time
  • Homeschool

In fact, the curriculum can even be adapted for use in the home–like for family devotions–providing rich opportunity for conversation.

COST

While hundreds of hours have been invested into developing and realizing LEMONS, we are offering it without cost. Why? Because we feel a great urgency to get this excellent material out there meeting needs and do not want money to be present an obstacle.

WHERE TO ACCESS LEMONS

To download the full LEMONS curriculum (8 sessions), just go to www.encompasscrisisresponse.org/resources/lemons

TIP: Start with the TIPS sheet. You’ll find a link to download it on the above webpage and it is also included in the zipped folder you can download.

For questions or further information, contact Barb at crisisresponse@encompassworld.org .

Encompass Directors’ Meetings in the Castle

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Can a healthy multi-ethnic church planting movement actually exist among migrants?

This is the question Encompass Directors pondered this week during meetings held at The Chateau (the Castle) of St. Albain in France. Why? Because at most times on this planet, 1 in 20 people are living as refugees, migrants, and other categories of the diaspora (geographical movement of people).

Barb Wooler in front of Encompass’ ministry center in France, the Chateau of St. Albain

Our guest speakers were church planters Theo & Rene Visser, whose ministry among migrants in the Netherlands has resulted in a healthy church planting movement involving 30 churches in Rotterdam. Since refugee ministry impacts each of the five networks in some way, including, or even especially the Encompass’ Crisis Response Network, the stories and truths shared by the Vissers resonated deeply with each director.

PRAY for Encompass directors as they return to incorporate the important ideas and resolutions they have learned. Why? Because God wants the nations to sing for joy and be glad, lifting up praise to their God, yet “how can they believe in the one in whom they have not heard?” (Romans 10:14)

Pray for the Lord of the harvest to provide many more people He will mobilize to pray, to give, and to go to reach the many nations represented in the diaspora.

Great Refugee Encounter in Ashland

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On a warm summer evening surrounded by cornfields near Ashland, Ohio, 43 people gathered to focus on refugees – who they are, what their lives are like, and how believers can help.

Fact is, most of us have never experienced the kind of sudden, deep, and often traumatic loss that refugees encounter. So to help the North American audience appreciate a little more fully the refugee experience, Pastor Steve and Celeste Kern (Wooster Grace, Wooster, Ohio) launched the evening with a poignant refugee simulation, also called a loss simulation.

Presenters JoEllen F and Steve & Celeste Kern (background)

The rest of the evening was given to JoEllen F., an Encompass worker serving in Germany among some 1 million plus middle-east refugees that flooded into that country in 2015-16.

Encompass’ director of recruitment, John Ward, concluded the evening with a challenge to pray, give, and even GO to help refugees through Hope Teams. A powerful new 1-2 year ministry experience focusing on serving refugees in two international cities: Birmingham, England, and a great city in Western Asia.

HOPE TEAMS INFO
Find out more about Hope Teams and connect with John Ward (go@encompassworld.org) to start investigating if God might send you to invest a year or two helping refugees heal from their losses and establish themselves in their new worlds.

HOST A REFUGEE ENCOUNTER
Also, this Refugee Encounter was the first of several we are planning, so if you are interested in hosting a refugee event at your church, please contact Barb (crisisresponse@encompassworld.org).