Mission Sunday and the Work in the South Pacific and Cusco, Peru

By Tim Shoemaker

The church here began supporting the work in the Philippines when Steve Vice met with our missions committee to discuss the work he would be doing in Micronesia. He dedicated himself to 10 years of working there, and the church here entered into that work with regular monthly support. After Steve and his family returned to the U.S., Joey Treat and his family moved to Saipan to continue that work. We helped in supporting his work that is under the oversight of the elders of the Valdosta Church of Christ in Lake City, GA. Joey and his family are presently living on the island of Palau, but are involved also in working with the churches located on Saipan, Yap, and Chuuk in Micronesia. At the present time the church in Saipan has 50 members while there are 30 in Chuuk, 10 in Palau and 6 in Yap.

Our help in the work in Cusco, Peru, is through our support of Barton Kizer and his wife Allison. They went to Cusco as part of a team that met at Freed-Hardeman University. They first spent six months training at Continent of Great Cities in Dallas, Texas. Then they spent three months internship with their overseeing congregation Memorial Parkway. They moved to Peru in October of 2010 to begin their work. 2016 has been a great year for the church in Cusco as the church has continued to average about 20 baptisms each year but they had 20 in the first 6 months of 2016. In addition to that they have seen many of the young Christians setting aside their fears to begin serving God. This included a brother, Diego, who was a former atheist who preached his first sermon!

The work in each of these places is going exceptionally well and the hope for continued success in the future is positive. While we were involved in both of these works from their inception, we had to end our support when our contribution on Mission Sunday was lower than we had hoped and the elders had to make some decisions as to which work we would be able to continue to support. BUT, last year saw our best contribution we have ever had and we were able to begin supporting these two works again.

It is our hope that we will meet our goals again this year so we will not be forced to stop supporting any of these great works. Please keep these brothers and sisters in your prayers and let us earnestly and prayerfully consider what we will give this Mission Sunday.

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