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Last week Global Outreach launched the Mission Marker Partners Ministry. Each week till Christmas we will be focusing on various needs as illustrations of the kind of help the Mission Marker Partners will be supporting as they give monthly or regularly for this ministry.
This Panama church building is a prime illustration of what can be done as Mission Marker Partners participate. Tim McCaleb, Coordinator of the Servant Partners Ministry, and Cliff Anderson, White Wing Bookstore Manager (and bilingual minister) just returned from Panama. They had been invited down by our overseer in Panama, Flavio Rosario, to scout out a possible Servant Partners project.
When Cliff Anderson saw this church building (photo below) he knew that he had to get the picture and bring it back for people here in North America to see. As I mentioned to the Global Outreach staff this building looks worse than most sheds in my city. Yet for these people it has become an outpost for ministry. Imagine their joy in March when one new building will be raised up at the central church.
The concept for the project is to build a church and medical clinic in a remote area where an indigenous tribe populate the mountainsides. We now have thirteen churches in this area and the photo below was taken while the group was riding on horseback for three hours moving back into the mountains to reach the main church and project sight. As they rode past this building Brother Rosario told the group that this was a Church of God of Prophecy where about thirty people meet for service each week.
This area is a marked as a high poverty zone by the government of Panama. Few services or industries have made the great effort to come to this region and help to provide basic life services to the people here. Even as the group traveled through the land they were surprised to see only one small Catholic church. The area leaders confirmed that there were only a few ministries that have come to this remote part of the land.
By the leading of the Spirit the Church of God of Prophecy has come to minister here and the receptive hearts of the people have drawn Overseer Rosario to invest national church resources. It has literally been a remarkable revival and now thirteen churches stand as a testimony to the spiritual hunger and grateful hearts of this people ignored by so many. Brother Rosario feels that there is potential here for great outreach as he sees the indigenous population in these mountains of 200,000 and the attention of so few drawn toward reaching them.
Yes riding horseback for hours, moving supplies for living and ministry, and enduring the elements are huge barriers. No doubt they have kept back the gospel spread to this region for many years. But today the Church of God of Prophecy is engaged and committed to invest in reaching this forgotten people of Panama . Servant Partners will be returning in March to tackle Phases One of this project. Any interested in helping to build in an environment where bare essentials are even limited can contact Tim McCaleb and Cliff Anderson.
Yes this is just one of the 3,000 locations in the Church of God of Prophecy where buildings are desperately needed to propel the gospel work of the church miles and miles further into the harvest. Those interested in becoming a Mission Marker Partner will find how to register in the core information below.
Mission Marker Partner Information
Congo Update - Mission Marker Partners
Nigeria Update - Mission Marker Partners
Myanmar Church Planting - Mission Marker Partners
DRC Pygmy Outreach - Mission Marker Partners