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.

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!

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.

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” – 4^th through 6^th 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 .

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.

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).