One of the basic necessities of life is food. Unfortunately, many, if not most, of our COJ children do not receive adequate nutrition at home for proper growth and development due to financial difficulties. However, by God’s provision through our COJ sponsors, our COJ children are receiving a well-balanced meal at church on Sundays. Week after week, volunteers from the church gather together to buy and prepare ingredients and cook a delicious meal for the children. We pray that our children are not only physically nourished, but also spiritually nourished with the Living Word of God. Please pray for the pastors, Sunday school teachers, and children to be filled with Jesus who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Thank you for your partnership in serving the “Least of These”.

News about COVID-19 are slowly ceasing and other news like inflation are becoming the new headlines. We are all aware of how this pandemic has affected the world and continues to affect the cost of living that is increasing everywhere around us. India, like other countries, was drastically affected by the pandemic, especially in June 2020 when it had the third highest COVID-19 cases in the world. Children in the orphanage were not able to attend school for 8-9 months that year. The following year, in 2021, schools tried to cram a yearlong curriculum into just 5 months. And today, India is experiencing the hottest recorded temperature since 122 years ago. Those who live off their harvest are taking a toll, losing about 10-35% of their crops. There have been five heatwaves from March to May as birds have died and fallen from the sky due to the heat. Therefore, please pray for India as many are being affected by these circumstances, especially the poor and needy. Now, in Chinthaluru, some of the orphans have grown up and moved out, but there are still children eagerly waiting for new sponsors. Will you become the channel of God’s love to these children? If the Holy Spirit is tugging at your heart and convicting you to sponsor a child, please feel free to contact our office or visit our website at www.coj.org.

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. -1 Corinthians 3:6 Now all of our COJ children have received the school supplies and have gone back to school in person! Thank you, dear sponsors, for your obedience to God’s command in giving life to the least of these. As you plant the seed in the hearts and lives of our COJ children, God will make it grow and bear much fruit. In fact, the fruits of your obedience is evident in the letters that the COJ children have written to their sponsors. Like this sponsor child, our prayer is that all of our COJ children will become leaders in their churches and communities for there is no greater blessing and reward than to witness the next generation rise up as a mighty army of God.

As King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes Chapter 3, there is a season for everything. There’s a time to plant and a time to harvest. In the beginning of 2022, we welcomed 187 new children to the COJ ministry. Praise the Lord! Our COJ ministry is continually growing, and God’s kingdom is expanding on this earth. Our prayer is that all the children will grow in God’s wisdom, love, and stature and become mighty men and women of God. At the same time, we also recognized 59 graduates from the COJ ministry. Despite the many challenges of the pandemic, by God’s favor, they completed their secondary education. Just as plants need sunlight and water to grow, your humble obedience and generous giving to the Lord has borne many fruits as evidenced by these graduates. Now, as they go out to the world, let’s gather our hearts and pray that they will submit and commit to the Lord. Thank you, sponsors, for being the channels of God’s blessing to our COJ children and graduates! Above all, we thank and praise God for his provision and protection! To God be the glory!

In 2018 we held the very first Abba Ecuador Youth Conference in the city of Guayaquil. But the door to continue the ABBA ministry there was quickly closed. There were only a few churches that desired to continually receive the youth training. Then, the COVID pandemic closed the border between Ecuador and Peru, and we were no longer able to ship the training books there. We asked the Lord why the road was closed for Abba Ecuador. Lord spoke softly and gently to us, “How much do you really love the youth of Ecuador?” We realized that our heart was not in the right place with our God and we begun praying for Ecuador with renewed heart. All of a sudden, the doors to Ecuador reopened and the training for pastors and leaders was held in February 2022. We have been invited back to train more pastors and leaders in the coming days. On the morning of the first day of training, the President of Ecuador made a public announcement that the border between Ecuador and Peru was completely reopened on that morning. Can this be coincidence? We’ve learned the greatest lesson: God’s kingdom expands only through agape love, the unconditional and sacrificial love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our God will bring many youth of Ecuador into His kingdom! Thank you for your partnership to share this amazing love of our God to our next generation!

Back to school! After two years of virtual classes during the pandemic, kids are finally heading back to school… in person! Most are overjoyed and have long awaited for this moment. So for Christmas, through the loving donations of sponsors, we sent the COJ children and youth backpacks to carry their books and school supplies when they head back to school in March. In addition, we also sent each COJ child’s family a special Christmas food basket. A little different than previous food baskets, this time around we included panettone, a popular dessert widely enjoyed by Peruvians during the Christmas season, along with hot chocolate. Our hope and desire is that each child realizes the love of the Father through the generous gifts of their sponsors and that they have already received the greatest gift of Jesus Christ!

I remember a little rhyme I learned and recited as a child while doing the hand motions that went along with it. “Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.” During the pandemic, we were no longer able to “see all the people.” Even as the country slowly returns to a form of normalcy, we are now presented with the question, “where are all the people?” Churches all over the world, including the US, have experienced a loss. And this is not only in the number of people gathering to worship. Many churches had to close their doors for good. But the sad truth is that this was a reality even before the pandemic. In 2014, an estimated 4,000 Protestant churches were planted, while 3,700 closed in a year according to Lifeway Research. In 2019, approximately 3,000 Protestant churches were started in the U.S., but 4,500 closed. Currently, more churches are closing than being started. A Barna Group study reported that non-practicing Christians have grown from 35% to 43% from 2000 to 2020. During the same time, practicing Christians declined from 45% to 25%. Practicing Christians were identified as those who strongly agree that faith is very important in their lives and have attended church within the past month. The term, non-practicing Christians, is interesting as this is incredibly self-contradictory. Can one be a Christian without practicing one’s faith? Yet, we see there are those who don’t seem to find this a contradiction. Of greater concern, however, is that the church is losing its future, the next generation – the Millennials, who were born between the early 80s and mid to late 90s, and Gen Z, who were born between the mid to late 90s to early-mid 2000s. According to another study done by the Barna Group in 2019, over 60% of young people raised in the church leave it before adulthood. According to the Pew Research Center study in 2018 and 2019, only half of Millennials (49%) describe themselves as Christians. While this may not seem like an alarming or surprising statistic at face value, when you look more closely at the further breakout of this number, only 2 out of 10 of those who profess to be Christians regularly attend church (Chart 1). There have been fewer surveys conducted with the Gen Z generation as most were not yet 18+, but we don’t expect the statistics to be more optimistic. Data from Barna Group surveys from 2016-2018 showed that in terms of priorities for the future, most, including churched Christians, prioritize either their personal interests or money. This is our reality. Our next generation is becoming unchurched before our very own eyes, no different from the world. Though attendance does not directly translate to one’s personal relationship with God, it is a valid indicator that makes us question how many of those who profess to be Christians are living as true disciples of Christ. In addition, worldly ones are becoming prioritized and replacing biblical ones. The forecast for the future of the church seems bleak. But it doesn’t have to remain this way. There is always hope in Jesus. Let us intercede for Holy Spirit fire to fall afresh on our next generation so they will be transformed into a mighty one that is no longer lost to the world but claims their identity as children of God and lives boldly for the name and kingdom of Jesus.

We’re back with updates! In the August newsletter, we shared with you about the food baskets that were being prepared for the COJ children and their families. By God’s grace and with all of your prayers, the pastors were able to safely buy, prepare, and deliver food baskets to the COJ children and their families! Since the delivery of the first food basket, we requested feedback on what other specific grocery items would be helpful for families during this time. We noticed that many churches were requesting the addition of beans, which are indeed a good source of protein, fiber, and many essential vitamins. With your ongoing support, a second distribution of food baskets - including beans! - has been made this month. Please pray for Peru’s economy to fully recover and for the love of God to be relayed to the COJ children and their families through these food baskets.

Tears roll down my face. I am sitting in front of my computer at the mission center office, translating a letter from a sponsor to their sponsored child. I start thinking about why I am crying. The letter is not written to me. I am simply responsible for delivering the original thoughts of the writer to the recipient, without anything getting lost in translation. But though I am not the intended final destination of the words on the pages, I find myself personally comforted by them. There are hard weeks, and this was one of those weeks. Of course, no one besides God knew the ins and outs of my personal struggles. Yet it is like the sponsor who wrote this letter knew. They seem to be speaking directly to me, acknowledging my struggles, and giving me a pat on the back, encouraging me to continue moving forward. But that is not the entirety of why I am touched. It is like I can tangibly feel the weight of love the sponsor has and wants to deliver to their child, a child they never even met in person and yet endearingly call them “My dear beloved daughter…” I can almost picture the sponsor as they carefully consider and pray about how to respond to what their sponsored child shared with them regarding the harsh reality and giants they face. This isn’t an ordinary love. It is a love that knows no bounds and cannot be constrained; it is the love of Jesus. And the thing is…we all are formed by our Creator to respond to love. I am blessed to witness the blossoming relationship between a sponsor and sponsored child within the love of Christ. The impact on the child is so evident in the following correspondences. Though this sponsored child doesn’t have much interaction with her biological father, God sent her another father who would be a channel of His wondrous love. And for the sponsored child, it is of far greater worth than anything else the world can offer. The impact you can have on the life of your sponsored child is likely beyond your imagination! There is a possibility that God will use you to even touch unsuspecting others. Nothing can ever separate us from the love of God! What great love it is. If you would like to write a letter to the children you are sponsoring, you can write it on personal stationery or stationery we have provided. You can also write it online at www.coj.org. We ask that you be a messenger of dreams and hopes during difficult times.

Last month, we were excited to share that with your support, food baskets were being prepared by local church pastors to deliver to the COJ children and their families. We are even more excited to update you that delivery of food baskets to COJ children has been completed! We have started to receive the letters of gratitude children have written to their sponsors and are working hard to have them translated and sent to you by next month. Same time, we are preparing the second wave of food supplies to all the COJ children. Please pray for us that the wisdom of our Lord will direct and guide us to provide what they are lacking the most. We want to thank you for allowing all the children to experience ‘Jehovah Jireh’ through your faithful and generous giving. We give all the glory to our wonderful Abba Father!