Harvest Obsession

Anyone who knows us knows that this time of year Marilyn and I begin to be overcome by the season - that season being the Harvest Season. Our church has its Harvest Sunday collection through which our worldwide missions program will be funded for the coming year. This year's Harvest Sunday goal was $1,312,000.00. The activities and events that run up to the collection always provide more to do than we have time to do. Our Missions Ministry is in charge of planning and carrying out these things and, as Minister of Missions, I am at the heart of these things. Marilyn, as a member of the ministry and the top level organizer that she is, is the eyes, hands, feet and brains of it all. Of course, we get lots of help from many sources, but we get very few breaks from the high level of activity.

Yesterday was Harvest Sunday. So, it is all behind us now. God blessed this church with a contribution of $1,177,480.00. Our experience tells us that the rest of the funding will be provided over the next few weeks. So, our work has been blessed and our prayers have been answered. Here are a few pictures of some of what happened:


We have an annual Harvest Dinner at which we have about 300 people in attendance. We have a keynote speaker; I make a presentation of the Harvest Projects; we honor someone for missions voluntarism (That's what's happening in the picture above). The whole affair is very interesting and encouraging.

During the Sunday assemblies of the church (we have two morning assemblies and one evening assembly - all having the same program), we have a "Parade of Nations." This year, including the long term and short term works in which our church is involved in 2005, we paraded about 60 flags.



Manuel and Pam deOliveira, missionaries in Mozambique



Johnson and Flora Ngoyo, mission workers in South Africa



Kevin and Debra Reynolds, missionaries in Brazil



Steven and Dawna Price with Ashley, Weston and Austin, missionaries in Benin



Jared and Christy Abels, missionary candidates for Mexico


Jim and Laura Reppart, Jim was our keynote speaker at the dinner on Saturday. He also spoke to the congregation at all three assemblies on Sunday.


Laura paraded the Indian flag. The Repparts are former missionaries to Cameroon and Kenya. They have become very good friends of our.



Marilyn carried the Philippine flag once and I carried it once.




All of the kids of the church brought cans full of coins they had collected to pour into wheel barrels. This event is a super crowd pleaser.



Morning fog is very unusual in this part of Texas. Harvest Sunday was a foggy morning.


While Harvest Sunday activities were going Marilyn was also involved in the annual collection that Rapha does of gifts for the needy on the Texas/Mexico border.

Now that Harvest Sunday is behind us, we can think about other matters. Things like the Thanksgiving holiday and Christmas plans. I even plan to go run, today. It's hard to know which we love the most Harvest Sunday or Harvest Sunday over. Either way it is a great blessing to us to be used by God to help in this great event.