February 2012
 

¹³Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. 14 Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."               ~  Matthew 19:13-14 (NIV)

Dear Friends in Christ,

Maybe many of you remember the Children’s Sermon “Challenge” from November 13, 2011. The Gospel Lesson for the day was Matthew 25: 14-30, the Parable of the Talents. It spoke of how the good and faithful servants received their blessing of talents (a large sum of money) from their Master. They took what was entrusted to them and went out and doubled the sum and returned it all to their Master.

To drive the message home, I gave $5.00 to each of the children that came forward for the Children’s Sermon and then challenged them to be creative in seeing what they could do with GOD’s MONEY to make it GROW! They were each charged with the assignment of reporting back to me in January with a letter that would tell the story of what they had done to:

1.Grow God’s Money
2.Use God’s Money to Share His Love.

Below you will find the exciting and inspiring stories from our wonderful children at FELC. Truly, a little child shall lead us!

Christ’s Joy to You!
Pastor Paul

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Pastor Paul,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to have fun while multiplying God’s money.

Mom decided right away to combine both of our $5 because Justin wanted to buy a dog with his money and Tyler wanted to buy just one more book from school. After a talk from mom Tyler understood ore of what our mission was.

Mom and Grandma donated money to purchase candy bars. Selling candy bars to our church family, friends and mom’s co-workers brought in $112.

We also wrote a letter to our friends and family out of town and state. The letter explained the project in helping to spread God’s Love and asked if they wanted to help us. It was exciting to check the mail every day to see what was arriving. The Christmas spirit was alive in our family and friends bringing in $149.

So with our original $10 that was kept we collected a total of $271 of God’s money to help spread his Love.  It was a big decision on how to spend the money. Many options were discussed.  Tyler ultimately made the decision to share the money within our own church.  $135 was donated to the Wednesday noon lunch program and $136 was donated to Malawi.

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Dear Pastor Larson,

Sorry this is so late, but I found out what I’m going to do with the money! Mom and I asked friends and family to give a matching donation of $5 and we’re going to buy food for the Salvation Army food bank once we find out what food they need. I started the donation by matching the $5 you gave me. I raised $75 total. Any money we have left over we will buy seeds and grow vegetables in the summer. We will donate the vegetables to the Wednesday Noon Lunch.

Sincerely,

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Pastor Paul,

I did chores to earn money for the church. Chores for: dad & mom, grandpa and granma, aunts and uncles, poppy and mama.    ($49.25 given to the General Fund)

Love,
Malerie Stanley
 

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