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February Women On Mission

Oakhill Mission Offering receipts for 2014:

• Annie Armstrong Easter Offering     $7,253.87
• Lottie Moon Christmas Offering       $4,446.77
• World Hunger Offering                   $2,804.71

Mission Club Offering (designated):

• Annie Armstrong Easter Offering      19.6%      $4,391.19
• Lottie Moon Christmas Offering        51.6%      $11,560.46
• State Missions Offering                   10.0%       $2,240.40
• Life Change Central (O. Hill)            10.0%       $2,240.40
• Highland Lakes Offering                  8.8 %        $1,971.55

• World Mission Club Total                        $22,404.00
• Combined Missions Giving                      $36,929.35

A FOCUS ON NORTH AMERICAN MISSIONS—written by Cindy Bradley

Denying Self to Pray and Give So Others May Hear

Foundations for the Week of Prayer for North American Missions and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering (AAEO) can be traced back to Annie Armstrong herself. As a young woman, Annie began giving to various missions causes in her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. As her missions horizons expanded, she also contributed to missions endeavors as far west as Oklahoma, as far east as China, and many places in between. It was Annie who led the women of the Southern Baptist Convention to give funds for the work of the Home Mission Board (now the North American Mission Board, or NAMB). Her concern for the plight of missionaries on the frontier home missions fields led her to institute a plan of sending boxes of necessities, supplies, and surprises to those missionaries. Throughout her service, she prayed for, wrote to, was an advocate for, visited, and encouraged frontier missionaries. “In 1895, Armstrong led the WMU to contribute $5,000 to help alleviate the Home Mission Board’s $25,000 debt and prevent the withdrawal of missionaries from their missions fields. In response, WMU instituted the Week of Self-Denial as a time of praying for and giving to home missions.” Since that year, Southern Baptists have observed an annual week of prayer for home missions and taken a special home missions offering. The offering was named in honor of Annie Armstrong in 1934.

Women on Mission will meet Monday, February 9th at 7:00 PM at the home of Barbara Burns. We will meet at the church to carpool at 6:45 PM.

Spare Change

Well, we made it through the holidays! Was your Christmas as crazy as mine? If you had a baby then probably. We are excited to have Henry Robertson Gotcher in our lives. He was born on December 29th weighing 8 lbs. 6 oz. We are now a family of six! We feel really blessed that everything went well and everyone is healthy. 

Even in the midst of that joyful news we had to learn quickly that life with three other kids doesn’t stop nor do the ministries of our church. We have had a busy couple of months at Oakhill. There has been a lot going on in the ministries. Here are some of the great things that have been happening. 

OHBC Food Pantry 

The food pantry has been having almost 100 families a month for the past couple of months. We gave out lots of food and lots of gifts in December. In January we added our third Saturday. We are now open the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Saturday’s of each month. We also had two people place their faith in Jesus in January. It has been very busy, but very exciting. Lots of new people from Oakhill have begun to volunteer. We have almost all our spots filled, however, we still need a little help on each Saturday. Let me know if you can help with this great ministry. 

Mission Trips 

We announced our missions emphasis for 2015 on December 7th. Make sure to pick up a missions guide from the information wall this Sunday. On the Missions Day people from our church gave money to help people in India. We gave to dig a fresh water well, a generator for the church, and for a pastor’s training conference. Many families are giving each month to feed children in the churches orphanage. Our kids are collecting money to buy the orphans new school uniforms (they gave over $95 the first week!). I am overwhelmed by our churches generosity!!! I am also excited about the trips to Detroit, Louisville, China, and India. Currently, there is information in the foyer about some of the earlier trips. There is an information meeting about our first Detroit trip on February 15th at 5:00 p.m. Feel free to call or email me for any information about the upcoming trips. 

Life on Mission 

Finally, I am very excited about the Life on Mission class we are offering on Sunday nights at 6pm. We just had our first class on Jan. 25th and will resume on Feb. 15th. This class complements our “A Place For _______” series and our missions emphasis that we had towards the end of last year. What better way to tie it all together then to discuss and learn how to be a missionary every day. I love this class because it is not an evangelism program. Yes, you will get some tools and resources on how to share your faith, but it is more about living every day on mission for Jesus. It’s not too late! Join us on February 15th and learn how to share life with others.