This year we are starting with a taller tree than in past years. Between the time you read this and the close of books on December 31, we need to give $1,644,792 in order to fully subscribe our budget. We absolutely have the resource to do so, but only if we all give together. This year’s budget is 12% more than last year’s budget, so as a gauge, if you are able to give 12% or more than you did last year, that would be enormously helpful.
As you are considering all this, know that during the course of 2023, your budget gifts have been making a transformational difference in the lives of people all around the world. Even as you read these words, there are 36 boys living on the Sodzo farm in Maua, Kenya, who have been rescued from a life of addiction on the streets. Those boys are the most recent of 372 boys your tithe dollars have helped reclaim on that farm and a total of 575 boys who have been saved from the grim life the streets offer. Instead, now they are being integrated into families—families like more than 10,000 family units whose domestic situations are being improved through Sodzo’s family strengthening program.
Or consider this—since the pandemic started, few countries in the world have fared worse than Peru. But your tithe dollars have allowed our church’s mission effort known as OSA to operate more than 60 soup kitchens in Collique, feeding 3,500 people each day. In addition to feeding bodies, OSA offers Bible studies for soup kitchen volunteers, sharing the love of Jesus with some of the poorest people on earth. In addition, your gifts have also fed the minds of 112 preschool through college students who are part of OSA’s educational program. And in 2023 alone, OSA treated more than 1,600 medical patients as part of our medical campaigns.
Finally, also consider this—just right down the street, your tithe gifts have been a lifeline to the 550 students and 53 faculty and staff members at MacGregor Elementary School. You made possible the provision of 60 musical instruments (for a music magnet school that had no money for instruments), supplies for 26 classrooms (saving teachers more than $5,500 they would have had to spend out of their own pockets), coats and shoes for children in need, and benevolence aid to teachers and families who had nowhere else to turn.
Every gift to the budget of South Main changes the world for the better. I pray you’ll take some time to consider what sacrificial gift you can make before December 31 to do good and to do it well and to do it together.
