Do you know of someone who turned away from God because of hardship of some kind? Maybe it was a prayer that seemingly went unanswered, a sudden and traumatic loss, a violent event, or any one of 7 billion possible scenarios – at least one each per person on the planet – people turn or fall away from God every day because of suffering and loss.

Believing that the Church has a whole lot she can do about this, four local churches spent an afternoon together considering what we can do to better prepare people for suffering. Not only CAN the Church do something about it, we must, because lack of doing so cuts into the heart of our mission Jesus entrusted to us: making disciples.

On Monday, June 24, representatives from four Charis Fellowship churches met to consider how to be better equipped to care not only for suffering people, but to proactively prepare people – believers and pre-believers – for hardship and suffering they are sure to encounter. The churches in attendance were: Osceola (Osceola IN), Grace Fellowship (Pickerington OH), East Side Grace (Columbus OH), Wooster Grace (Wooster OH). These are joining a growing list of local churches ramping up their ability to care for people suffering from trauma and other forms of grief and heart wounds.

THE PLAN: The plan is to train up! In early November, Encompass Crisis Response joins the American Bible Society (ABS) in offering a 3-day basic training in Trauma Healing. Others who have already completed the basic training are working towards completing the advanced training, which will allow them to become certified trainers of this powerful material. That’s the plan; the dream is to have a corps of such trainers who will take this powerful, bible-based and easily reproduceable method throughout the Charis Fellowship and beyond.

Want to learn more about participating (or sending a participant) to the November Trauma Healing Training? Contact Barb by email at crisisresponse@encompassworld.org or call/text (574-453-6479).

We don’t have to stand by helplessly as another turns or falls away; let’s rise up, train up, and serve!

Over 80 times in the past 20 months, Charis Fellowship churches in North America have deployed people to help people in need in disasters. Most of these deployments were in response to floods due to five hurricanes – Harvey (Aug 2017), Irma (Sep 2017), Maria (Sep 2017), Florence (Sep 2018), and Michael (Sep 2018). Now that Charis churches are getting experience in service responding to crisis, more and more of them are realizing that there could be some strong benefit to actually preparing in advance for the next storm that we know will surely come.

Five churches have expressed interest in forming crisis response teams in their local churches. These teams would be charged with preparing, equipping, and efficiently mobilizing teams to deploy to disasters. As one missions mobilizer said, “If we have been able to do so much good serving pretty much on the fly, imagine what we could do if we actually planned ahead to serve!”

A GROWING COALITION

On Thursday, June 27, (3-4 PM EDT) Encompass Crisis Response is hosting a forum on how to form local church crisis response teams. The information will be especially geared for those tasked with starting a Disaster Response Team in their church, but ten spots are available for those wanting to find out more. Contact Encompass Crisis Response (email: crisisresponse@encompassworld.org or by text: 574-453-6479) to find out more about how to join this call by computer or cell phone.

This one hour meeting could be the key to not just serving in the next disaster response, but serving in excellence.

Religious persecution — especially against Christians — is on the rise, and no one knows this better than a young Indonesian wife and mother named Asia Bibi.

In 2010, Asia was working in an orchard with others when she went to fill a bucket with water for herself and her co-workers. When she dipped her cup into the bucket to drink, her Muslim co-workers objected, saying that in doing so, she, a Christian, contaminated it for Muslims. When the incident was reported to the local authorities, Asia was immediately arrested and held in solitary confinement to await trial for blasphemy. If found guilty, she would face death by hanging.

That was in 2010. Eight years later, on October 31, 2018, her case finally was tried before Indonesia’s highest court and she was found innocent of breaking Indonesian law. However, during the eight years, Asia’s trail had become a high profile case in this 87% Muslim majority country, and when the verdict was announced, crowds poured out into the streets in protest.

Her family sought and was granted asylum in Canada, but Asia continued to be held in Indonesia for her own safety. Yesterday, March 8, came the welcome news that she has been secreted out of the country and is now reunited with her family in Canada.

Click here to see the full story on BBC.

ACTION

• PRAY for Asia and her family’s adjustment to their very different life and world in Canada, and also for her healing. Eight years of solitary confinement will have taken a toll even on the most stout of heart.
• SUBSCRIBE – In addition to posting news about the persecuted church, each Fall Encompass Crisis Response joins the global Christian community in mobilizing the Church in remembering in prayer our persecuted brethren throughout the world. Email us at crisisresponse@encompassworld.org to subscribe to that email campaign.

Recovery efforts in Mozambique after the March 13 Cyclone Idai took a major hit with the arrival of a second named storm, Cyclone Kenneth on April 21. It would seem that whatever was left standing in the wake of Cyclone Idai – the most powerful storm event ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere – was swept away by Cyclone Kenneth’s rain and wind. (Excellent New York Times video update.)

Your help through Encompass Crisis Response is providing thousands of dollars of relief supplies to a local church in Mozambique, partners of our friends at the Twin Cities Church in Minnesota.

The first of three trips was completed last week, serving over 300 families of the targeted 1,000 this project is hoping to help. On this trip:

• Two regions were visited in Mozambique: Zambezia and Beira
• 140 families in Zambezia received: 55 pounds of rice or cornmeal, 5 pounds of sugar, 2 pounds of salt, soap, and cooking oil
• 175 families in Beira received: 22 pouns of rice, 11 pounds of flour, and 3.3 pounds of beans

Our partner Pastor George Stagg of Twin Cities Church writes:

“They also provided some emergency construction materials and a significant amount of medicine administered by a nurse with them. There is also a need to rehabilitate family farms.

There will be two trips over the next few weeks to complete this goal (of helping 1,000 families). As you can see, it’s not a great amount or great variety of food, but it will provide a necessary supplement. With the rehabilitation of farms, the help will provide for both short and long-term needs. 

Additionally, the team has identified 50 buildings — churches and homes — that need substantial work. Our help will provide essential foundations and structures, but will not be everything needed for completely rebuilding. Local efforts will fill the gap.

Many of these people are brothers and sisters who have lost most, if not all, of their possessions. Their annual food supply that they obtain from farming has been wiped out for this season. Their homes are in shambles.”

PRAISE God that the initial cholera outbreak has been contained with several measures including large-scale vaccinations.

PRAY for protection for the church in Beira as they start planning the second of three trips to distribute relief supplies.

PRAY that the church will be part of how God is redeeming such horrible loss for good.

Jesus’ last words to His disciples, and by extension to the Church, was to make disciples of every nation. It’s a pretty big deal! But sadly, the process of discipleship – whether the making of new disciples or the maturing of existing ones – is so often hampered by unmitigated (unprocessed) grief, heart wounds, and trauma.

Helping people get through grief and heart wounds is not easy, as the writer of Proverbs said, “A person’s thoughts are like water in a deep well, but someone with insight can draw them out” (Prov. 20:5, GNT)

For this reason, Encompass Crisis Response is joining local Charis churches to raise up a corps of grief workers equipped to help people process through their grief – whether in disaster situations or in local church contexts. These grief workers are trained to use a 5-session, Bible-based, and highly-participatory study called Healing the Wounds of the Heart. The goal, however, is to train teams in local churches equipped to use this 5-session course in their church and community.

Encompass Director of Crisis Response Barb Wooler (back row, far right) with others who were certified on April 10 as Training Facilitators for trauma mitigation.

In 2018, 29 people received level-one training in basic trauma mitigation. We are now working towards getting at least five of those through the next level of training by the end of 2019. On April 10, that goal of a corps of 5 trainers came one step closer as the first person from that class of 29 completed level two.

PRAY that at least four more of the original 29 2018-trainees will be able to complete the pre-requisites to continue on to advanced training. The ultimate goal is to have a corps of trainers able to help local churches in grief counseling using the American Bible Society’s bible-based and proven approach practiced in 160+ countries.

Want to learn more about equipping a grief counseling team at your church? Contact us at crisisresponse@encompassworld.org.

Rain had been falling for a full week before Cyclone Idai made landfall on March 4, 2019. By the time the cyclone (hurricane) struck, there was no place for the water to go, so it spread, laterally. One such inland “river” was reportedly 31 miles wide, carrying along and depositing millions of tons of mud and debris.

Though people in North America have heard very little about this crisis on mainstream media, the resulting disaster has impacted 3 million people and is already being called by the UN as “the worst ever disaster to strike the southern hemisphere.” This video report hints at the scope of the disaster; it is from a BBC news crew that surveyed the “inland sea” by helicopter during a lull in the rainfall. Video report link.

Pastor George Stagg (back center) with Mozambican pastors

On March 3, as the cyclone was barreling towards Beira, Mozambique, Pastor George Stagg had just completed a pastoral training stint there with their local partner and was boarding a plane to return home to the Twin Cities, Minnesota. The next day, the powerful cyclone made landfall. To date, over 750 people are known to have lost their lives in the three African countries in the impact zone: Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. This number is rising every day now as the flood waters slowly recede. With the country’s roads, bridges, and infrastructure heavily damaged and farmlands and livestock devastated, it will be a long way to recovery.

PARTNERING TOGETHER TO HELP
Encompass Crisis Response is grateful to partner with George Stagg and the Twin Cities Church in helping the Beira Church in Mozambique reach out to people in need both in the church and local communities. With the Twin Cities Church and the church in Beira already in a several-year-long church-equipping project, the avenues and relationships are already in place for this outreach.

OUR PROJECT
Encompass Crisis Response is raising funds to be used for immediate relief supplies and ongoing needs for months to come as people rebuild their lives and recover from their losses. These funds will be entrusted to Twin Cities Church, who passes on 100% of what is sent them to the Beira Church in Mozambique.

HOW TO HELP
We invite you to join us as we seek to raise and send on $10,000 to help. How to give:

• Send checks made out to Encompass World to: Encompass World, PO Box 3298, Monument, CO 80132.
• Give online here, indicating the amount of your tax-deductible contribution.

THANK YOU in advance for your partnership as we help the Mozambican Church care for those in their community who have lost so much.

A recent news story on NBC features the work of UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) in the Central African Republic (C.A.R.) and makes the sad assertion that the Central African Republic is the worst place in the world to be a child.

Perhaps some might object saying there are at least a few worst places in the world to be a kid, but bottom line is that the C.A.R. is definitely on the shortlist.

Watch the NBC story: Caught in the Crossfire (10-min.).

LOCAL CHURCH STRONG
The Charis Church in the C.A.R. – 2,000+ churches and 300,000 members strong – is a huge resource. Mobilized and equipped, they have been and will continue to be a strong blessing to this struggling population, increasing quality of life through Christian community, faith, as well as its outreach activities and other programs.

This year, 43 Hand in Hand schools are blessing 2000+ orphans in the C.A.R.

HAND IN HAND ORPHAN SCHOOLS
One such local church program is called Hand in Hand Orphan Schools. In contrast to the bleak backdrop presented in the NBC story, these schools are brightening every corner where they are. And Encompass is doing what we can to ensure that this powerful program’s future remains bright.

What we need most right now is your prayers.

• PRAY for wisdom and for the ability to see with fresh eyes whatever changes should be made to ensure these schools have a sustainable future regardless of what is happening on the national level.
• PRAY that God will raise up the funding and workers to carry on the North American side of this ministry.