This past April I was in Cebu City, Philippines. We had just finished eating breakfast in the mall across from our hotel, when I looked out the window and saw two children. a boy and a girl. The boy was probably eight years old and the girl appeared to be about six. Both were a bit dirty, barefooted, and each had a big plastic bag. They stopped at the first trash can and got out a few plastic bottles. Then they headed down the street in search of another trash can. Before I could get out of the mall, they were gone, fading into the other people on the street. There were other children on the street, also, with their parents. Some had eaten a good breakfast in the mall, while these two were looking through other people’s trash in order to help their family survive one more day.

Can you imagine these children walking by a big department store in Cebu City in December and looking through the window and seeing ” big flat screen TV with pictures of the Christmas celebration in America? A tree with presents two feet deep and children frantically tearing paper from the presents that revealed toys-cars, trains, dolls, electronics. The family gathered around a table laden with all kinds of delicious food, laughing and enjoying the meal together. These children’s eyes would bulge as they stared at these seen  until the program faded and the news from their country came on. Sadly, they would look at their ragged clothes, and bare feet, am feel the hunger pangs begin to gnaw at their empty stomachs, as they turn away in search of the next trash can. In our thinking about Christmas, what kind of Christmas do you think these children will have?

The B0ard of Foreign Missions is dedicated, first of all, to sharing the Gospel with as many as we can, and also help as many as we can with the basic needs of life. Your gifts to Foreign Missions this month through the Heart of Missions Christmas Offering, and throughout the year, enables us to minister to children like this around the world. It will not provide for them “a Christmas in America experience: but it will help us enable some to survive for another day, month, year. Most of all, it will enable us to share Christ with them, which is the true meaning of Christmas-Christ with us, our Lord, Savior, Redeemer. and Friend.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROUS GIFTS DURING THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON !!