September 4, 2014 Member Letter

Dear Brethren,

The Labor Day holiday (the first Monday in September) is traditionally considered the end of the summer here in the United States. Students go back to school, and the weather begins to change. But there is something else that happens this time of year that stirs excitement within the Church.

By the time I write the next member letter (the first week of October), we will be in the midst of the festivals. The Feast of Trumpets will be observed during the last week of September; the Day of Atonement, in early October; and a few days later, we will have the Feast of Tabernacles followed by the Last Great Day. Before you can even catch your breath from the summer, the festivals will be here!

I believe this will be an especially important festival season for the Church of God, a Worldwide Association. Three hundred more people in the United States registered for the Feast of Tabernacles this year than any previous year. While registration numbers are a good indicator of total attendance, normally we have more people attend than actually register. Another interesting fact is that this year we had more than 600 U.S. members register to attend Feast sites outside the U.S., which is twice the number we had last year.

In addition to the Festival registration numbers, we have been very encouraged this summer by the number of unique visitors to our website, Life, Hope & Truth. In June we had 137,000; in July that number increased to 168,000; and in August we reached 195,000. These are individuals and not repeat visitors or page views (which surpassed 400,000 for the first time). Since our worldwide attendance is approximately 10,000, we know that the vast majority of these are people who are not associated with the Church. Of course, in the world of the Internet these are still small numbers, but in the two years since we began the Life, Hope & Truth website, we have gone from 6,000 (June of 2012) to almost 200,000 unique visitors in one month. That is an excellent and promising increase!

This summer we also had four young ladies volunteer to travel to Zambia and Zimbabwe and teach English to more than 40 members. This has been a very successful program that is supported annually by Foundation Outreach International (FOI), a nonprofit organization that is committed to doing good and providing leadership opportunities in communities around the world. As a member of the board of FOI, Doug Horchak and his wife, Tanya, traveled to both countries to oversee the two projects. Here are some excerpts from the volunteers’ reports, written after returning home to the U.S. I hope you will find them as moving as I did.

From Courtney Tobin:

Spiritual lessons came from the messages, brethren, and from the journey itself. I was reminded of the importance of trials in our lives and how they make us stronger. How it’s about the attitude in which we approach them and how they are necessary for our growth before we enter into God’s Kingdom. We are to be like a sponge and soak up all the spiritual lessons and knowledge that we can. We must be healthy spiritually and use the Ten Commandments as our compass.

No matter what language we speak or what other differences we may have, we all need God. We all have strengths and weaknesses, trials and struggles. It is important for us to guide and support one another, to inspire and lift up each other. I was so inspired by the people I met. I was inspired by the children, through their innocence; the women, though their submission and serving and selfless attitudes; and the men, by their leadership and courage.

From Amanda Harring:

Almost all of the members we taught English to were from Gokwe, a rural area in Zimbabwe where Shauna is the most spoken language. We had around 17 women and 13 men. Although English is taught in Zimbabwean schools, many of the members only went to school through fourth or sixth grade, so most knew only very basic conversational English. One woman, a mother of 12, knew only her ABCs at the beginning of the week. One day, I sat one-on-one with her to try to help her understand full words. About every 30 seconds, she would look up and give me a huge grin, then look back down at her paper and diligently spell out the words we were going over. Although she couldn’t verbalize it to me, it was obvious that she was thrilled to be given this opportunity to learn and improve her English. Even though it took her a bit longer than everyone else, I never saw her give up or even seem discouraged. It would have been so easy for her to give excuses for how far behind she was compared to everyone else, but she never gave up, always did her best, and improved drastically by the end of the week.

From Erica Bennett:

I discovered a sort of pattern during my time in Zambia: Those of us who have much always believe we should have more. Those who do not have much of anything, especially those living in a country where no one has much of anything, tend to be more thankful that they don’t have less. Those of us who have access to the best technology and the most expensive services expect the technology and the services to work exactly as we want them to, because normally they do. Those who have less access to technology and services expect everything to take more time, because it usually does. It’s not that they don’t want nice things that work well or great service that accomplishes everything it was meant to, it’s just that they don’t seem to feel entitled to it.

From Vivian Waddle:

Some of the happiest and hardest working people can come from the harshest backgrounds. I found this to be very true of the people in Zimbabwe. We arrived in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, a couple of weeks ago to teach the members there English. As we drove to the small farm where we would be teaching for a week I was uncertain as to how the brethren would react to me, a young, inexperienced foreigner trying to teach them. I had no previous experience with teaching and felt completely unprepared to be trying to instruct others when I was merely a student myself. So when we began our first day of classes, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I most certainly didn’t realize how much I would take away from this experience. The unabashed joy the people there felt to be able to learn and meet new people, the determination and strength of will they showed in each effort to absorb new information, and their humility and desire to serve even as we were there to serve them showed me an example of how to live a happy life that I will never forget.

From these reports we can see at work the principle that giving your time to serve others actually benefits you as much as those you are serving. When you think about it, this testifies to one of the most important aspects of Christianity and helps explain the importance of the Church when it comes to interaction and service.

Recently on a trip I heard about a member who had stopped attending services. He explained that he could be a Christian by himself, without any need for the Church. I didn’t see a need to argue with his position, but it is an important question to ask: Can you be a Christian by yourself, without the Church? If Christianity only involves keeping the commandments on a “thou shalt not” basis, one could conclude that it is possible to do it by yourself. But is that what Christ intended? We are told in Matthew 16:18 that Christ would build His Church. We know that God does not do anything without a purpose. What is the purpose of the Church? There are many answers to that question, but among them would surely be the opportunities to learn and to practice your Christianity by serving others, both within and without.

The Feast of Tabernacles is that rare opportunity when we can all serve someone. You can take a needy family to dinner, assist a widow, usher at services, help organize a social activity or simply be there at each service with a smile and a warm handshake. Never underestimate the impact you can have on others and, by extension, on yourself. The Feast also reminds us that we have brethren around the world. We will celebrate this year’s Feast in 40 locations, most of those outside the U.S.

Please pray that this will be a wonderful, inspiring and encouraging Feast. With all the bad news in the world, there is nothing quite like the Feast, where we have a time set aside to celebrate the good news of the soon coming of Jesus Christ. It is a time of year when God commands us to rejoice while learning to fear Him (Deuteronomy 14:23-26). If you combine rejoicing with service, you will benefit more than you can possibly imagine, and I predict that it will be the best Feast ever!

Sincerely, your brother in Christ,

 

Jim Franks