Prayer Partner Update – Shoes and school supplies needed!

Faithful Prayer Partners,

It has been one of the best summers we’ve ever had at Mission Amarillo. We’ve just completed the work for the month of June and it’s been outstanding. So far, we’ve had 170 students and adults serve in 14 apartment communities and do work projects in 5 locations. They have served over 400 kids and adults in the apartment communities.

We have at least three more groups that will serve here over the next three weeks. Please be in prayer for them as well as the seeds of the gospel that have been planted in the 400 served so far!

To see out photos of our summer, check out our Facebook page at this link, https://www.facebook.com/MakeAStepUp . Be sure and like us while you’re there!

Following are more prayer requests that need your intercession:

Back to School Outreach – We are in the process of distributing and collecting registration for our school supply project, Back to School Outreach. We are trying some new concepts this year. In some of our more established communities, where our property missionaries know the residents well, we are selling backpacks full of school supplies for $5-$10 a piece. This helps the residents by giving them a steep discount but prevents the creation of dependency to some extent. The proceeds from these sales will be reserved to help residents of these specific communities when needs arise. This way, the residents themselves are participating in helping one another through the purchase of the school supplies. Please pray for Astoria Park/Greenacres, North Grand Villas, and Cypress Creek Apts as we implement this new concept.

We will still have seven apartment communities that we will provide school supplies free of charge. In all, we will help more than 800 kids with school supplies, so we need your help both for school supplies for the four mentioned above and for the seven communities that will received them free. We now have storage space available to store these supplies long term, so you can either donate school supplies or adopt a property. Either way will help us more than you know. Please call, 236-3487, or email me at jeff@missionamarillo.org to find out the details.

Shoe Closet – We are thankful to First Baptist Church Amarillo for donating around 450 pairs of shoes during their VBS in June. Also, FBC Claude will be collecting shoes for us during their VBS in July. These collections are appreciated, but we still need to collect as many everyday shoes as possible over the rest of the summer. Last summer and fall, we received around 1600 shoes through area churches and organizations. We ended up giving away 1700 pairs of shoes to students in 28 schools in Amarillo, Bushland, Canyon, and River Road, and to students living in 11 affordable housing communities. Our plans are to expand to every remaining school that has needy kids before the beginning of the school year. As you can imagine, we need to collect more everyday shoes to meet the demand we will face this fall. I’d like to ask you to do two things. First, consider hosting a collection event at your church or organization. Given our current inventory, we need to collect at least 1000 more shoes before school starts August 27. Second, please pray that the Lord who owns the cattle on a thousand hills would provide us with the shoes we need to help kids in need. To see the sizes we need most, from this website, place your mouse pointer on shoe/hygiene/household closet and click on “needs”.

Apartment ministry: One of the things I’m most excited about is the day to day ministry that is going on through our property missionaries. We have three properties with refugees from seven countries and we have your typical American poverty in our other communities. We are beginning to see a rise in interests in beginning organic/home based outreaches to the people living in these communities. We have what I would call a seed planting operation occurring regularly at Glenwood Apts. and we have new churches who are getting involved in reaching out to students in Amarillo, Canyon, and Hereford. We have excellent work going on at most of our communities and are beginning to see the fruit of our workers labor. Please pray that the Lord of the Harvest would send workers into His harvest fields and that He would raise up workers from the harvest.

Last of all, please pray for some efforts we are currently planning. We are trying to raise the general awareness of Mission Amarillo so more people can participate in the work. Anytime you participate in this type of endeavor, there is always the danger of the ministry becoming more important than the mission. Our ultimate mission at Mission Amarillo is to take the gospel to the forgotten and impoverished in our area and partner with willing churches to make disciples. Please pray that efforts to access more resources don’t overwhelm our primary mission. We always want to make Christ known to those who don’t know Him. We will need your prayers to accomplish all He wants us to.

Thank you for lifting up this ministry and the support you give it.

Grace,

Jeff Parsons