Thank you CMS Africa

Dear all at St James by the Park

I want to thank you for your prayers and most generous gifts to the CMS-Africa Local Partners and their work. You have given over £12,000 so there is enough to make a substantial gift to each of the 17 local partners to encourage and affirm them in their ministry of £350.
Alongside this due to your generosity we can also provide £350 in each community to help provide relational relief to the poorest affected families – something the local partners are keen to do.
Mini-proposals have flooded in from the local partners to CMS-Africa. They will provide food and sanitary supplies in food for orphaned children and to very poor families in DR Congo , agricultural seeds in Kenya to grow crops, a micro-finance scheme for 15 widows and girls in Tanzania, help to families that are near the church who are starving but are not members of the Anglican church in Juba, South Sudan, a pa system in the South Sudanese refugee camps in Northern Uganda, support for Burundian foreign students in Kenya who have nothing and desperate and so the list goes on but I must not!
CMS-Africa will discuss with me about the use of any remaining monies (and the added gift aid) and it is likely to go to support the Local Partner Programme.
The CMS-Africa local partners do not know that  I am involved in this gift but CMS-Africa will let them know that a church has made a significant love gift  to encourage them in the Lord and to affirm them in their ministry as well as making a gift for local partners to serve the local communities they love.
I will do all the due diligence required to ensure the monies are spent well and I am confident CMS-Africa will use the monies well. They will report to me and our church on the use of the grant. I will be accountable to the parish for giving  a further report and sharing some the stories in more detail in due time.
So a big thank you to all who have given in finance and prayer for this one-off appeal. The relief and delight on the face of CMS-Africa international director, Moses, was palpable. Last Pentecost Rev.  Moses Bushendich spoke at St James by the Park so he is really deeply appreciative and sends his blessings to you.
You have touched the world and along with CMS Africa have fulfilled these verses
“ Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”                                        Romans 12:12-13
With great thanksgiving to God
Paul Thaxter