2011-12 THANKSGIVING OFFERING  |  GOAL: $100,000.00

We hope you have been planning for your Thanksgiving Offering since giving last year’s.  Paul wrote the Corinthian church about the special offering they were giving and receiving – and reminded them that they had announced their intentions a year before that time that they would enthusiastically participate [2 Corinthians 8.10-11].  The steps that Paul lays out for us to follow are: [1] Purpose in your heart that you will give, and what you would like to give  |  chapter 8.11-12 & 9.7 [2] Plan ahead by laying aside designated portions as it comes in – so you won’t have to get it all together at the same time…and especially on short notice  |  chapter 9.1-5 [3] Pray about it frequently, and trust God to give you what you need to receive in order to give what you have purposed to give  |  chapter 9.6-11

MONTHLY GENERAL FUND SOLVENCY

We need every one of us to continue to give regular monthly offerings to our GENERAL FUND in order to supply our missionaries’ ESSENTIAL MAINTENANCE TRANSACTIONS every month.  Without our generous offerings to our GENERAL FUND, we cannot finance our missionaries’ standard monthly disbursements without requiring them to suffer deductions from their monthly deposits.  We thank God – AND THANK EACH OF YOU – that we have not had to reduce our missionaries’ monthly deposits any month this year.  That is because you have supplied their needs by your generous contributions to the GENERAL FUND.

If you contribute regularly to our GENERAL FUND – I hope you realize just how essential a role you play to keep our missionaries’ ministries going month by month.  Please know that your giving not only supplies the needs of God’s servant-saints, but it also multiplies the thanksgivings that are continuously being given to God for you!  2 Corinthians 9.12-15

BUT – WE ALSO NEED A GENEROUS THANKSGIVING OFFERING

We use the funds from the Thanksgiving Offering to finance all the other benefits and services we have committed to them to provide for their ministry needs.  FOR EXAMPLE: calculating here from the 1^st of August [after the first seven months of 2011], we have disbursed approximately $49,000.00 of the $63,400.00 from last year’s Thanksgiving Offering.  That gives us approximately $14,400.00 to carry us through the remainder of the year. It will require a lot of ‘eking-out’ to make it last.

[If you want to refresh your memory how our Monthly General Fund and Thanksgiving Offering monies are applied – open up ‘April 2011’ in the right-hand Archives column, and you will find there an article describing how our various General Fund commitments are supplied and disbursed.]

THAT IS WHY WE NEED TO REACH OUR $100,000.00 GOAL.