DRC loves orphans...plus other news from the elders

Praise God and thank you, church, for your phenomenal response to Pastor Matt’s sermon on Sunday kicking off National Adoption Month. While we normally take a special offering on the first Sunday of each month directed to the Congregrational Care Fund, this month the elders asked the congregation to direct their giving to the Adoption Assistance Fund, another fund that the church has contributed to for the past few years.

On Sunday, the offering to the Adoption Assistance Fund was $5,289.00. This morning, the elders decided to allocate $2,000 to the Martin and Paulina Yeung family to defray the costs of adopting their second son, for whom they are traveling to China in less than two weeks. Including this gift, the church has contributed a total of $7,000 to the Yeung family for this adoption.

We also decided to allocate $1,000 to Claris Health, a Los Angeles-based not-for-profit that empowers individuals to make informed pregnancy and sexual health choices. Claris is one of the ministries that DRC supports regularly through her missions budget. $500 goes to Koinonia Family Services, a premier foster and adoption agency through which several DRC families have been trained, certified, fostered, and adopted children. After the service, ten or more families signed up with Koinonia to learn more about becoming foster parents. The remainder of the offering goes into the Adoption Assistance Fund for future ministry.

In other business, we are in escrow to purchase a three-bedroom house in Hawthorne, as we the congregation approved at the Family Business Meeting in August. The purchase should close by the end of this month. The elders also established a Building Capital Fund to accept directed offerings and contributions toward upgrading and expanding our permanent facility, as we also discussed at the Family Business Meeting in August.

Finally, Pastor Jim Butcher and Atlas Hardy are traveling to Guatemala later this month to visit the ministry started by Mano con Mano, one of the missionary organization DRC has supported since its inception in 2003. It is a feeding center called the Nim Jay in the small rural Mayan village of Yalu. Pray for their safe travels and for much fruit from Nim Jay.

In all of this, we give glory to the LORD and praise Him for the opportunities to serve His wonderful Gospel! The minutes from these elder meetings can be found here.