HARVEST 2019 MID-YEAR REPORT

HARVEST ANNUAL FRIEND RAISER EVENT
October 11, 2019, 7:00 pm
Camelback Bible Church – Family Life Center
3900 East Stanford Drive, Paradise Valley – AZ 85235

The Harvest annual friend raiser event is a time for fellowship and celebration of God’s work around the world. Bob Moffitt with Ramiro Carbajal, and Prakash Nemade will share stories about Harvest’s work and show a video about the ministry in Africa. A delicious dessert buffet will be served. This is not a fund raising event –the funds for Harvest ministry will be raised before the event—but it will be an occasion to announce how much was raised and thank the Lord for His provision.  You are cordially invited to participate.

 

HARVEST 2019 MID-YEAR REPORT
Establishing self-sustaining Samaritan Strategy teams in new areas

Elly Oliveira
    Harvest Global Field Coordinator 

A vision unfolding
Bob Moffitt began Harvest Foundation with the vision of helping local churches who lacked the needed resources to demonstrate Christ’s love and compassion to a broken world.  Later, God expanded the vision to encompass a broader focus: to prepare local churches around the world to disciple their people to fully respond to the directives of Jesus Christ; that is, to live out Christ’s mandate to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” on an international scale. For several years this vision was implemented by thousands of church leaders worldwide.  In 2012, Harvest had fifty-two national workers in the global team who embraced the same vision articulated as “every member of every church sacrificially serving in their world as Jesus served in His”. Then, we asked if the Samaritan Strategy (SamS) training’s that we started to offer could give church leaders the tools they needed and accomplish that vision.  By God’s grace we have seen the training’s’ ability to deliver the tools at scale. They have become a fruitful means for discipleship and, moreover, they have served as powerful catalysts for positive changes in many communities.

 While providing free training’s and ministry resources to address people’s needs in four areas, wisdom, physical, spiritual, and social, we have given church leaders the tools to help individuals and families overcome specific challenges.  Here are some examples:

After a SamS training in Rwanda, church members visited a lady who suffered an accident where she was seriously burned.  Her husband was in jail and her child was sick. Church members shared words of encouragement from the Scriptures, provided corn flour and vegetables, clothing, and befriended her.  In that same region, as people grew in their concern and ability to serve, they provided sixteen health insurance plans to poor families.

From Kenya, our associates reported, “The SamS training fostered unity among the ethnic groups of Luos and Kalanjins, and helped a church established in 1933 by a German missionary implement a reforestation project. A retired agricultural engineer said that the training was God’s divine appointment and an eye opener. I have travelled far and wide in the world facilitating projects for governments, yet I had never thought that I could be a blessing to my neighbor.  Now I know that I need to love more than just use words. Before I meet my Maker, I will facilitate planting trees in these hills of Songhor.’”

 Lessons to enjoy and apply
 Harvest’s message was condensed in eight core lessons, which are available in fourteen languages for free download from our website (www.harvestfoundation.org).  Because of the universal appeal of the lessons, they crossed borders and we learned that the SamS model could scale to help churches everywhere. In the first semester of 2019, we reached 1,006 churches in 24 countries, working with 270 trainers on the ground to create adaptations of the lessons contextualized to their own language and culture.

A training participant from Liberia wrote, “I couldn’t have had a better experience in life than encountering the magnificent teachings of Samaritan Strategy. The way people do church in my country is almost like a contradiction to the entire gospel. People are most interested in themselves than others. Samaritan Strategy greatly helped to shape my mindset about my environment and existence, thus discovering my hidden potentials … The church is a window to the entire world, and it is God’s instrument of healing for the brokenness in society.  With the help of these teachings, I have been able to impact many young people.  I infused what I learned from Samaritan Strategy in the Sunday school lessons at my church (Koinonia Baptist Church). At the university, I have tried to be a role model for many young people who see a positive lifestyle as an inspiring tool. Helping me conquer my fears and face the realities of life, the gospel has been my hallmark and my greatest achievement ever, and as freely as I have received, freely I am giving.”

In Araquari, Brazil, fifteen churches came together to help a tribal community of Guaranys.  They did more than thirty-five seed projects providing food, clothing, celebrating holidays together, and befriending the families living in the village.  They built a schoolhouse and through their advocacy, the Brazilian government registered three Guarany teachers, employed them and four staff among the villagers to make the school operational.  Now church members are planning a vocational curriculum and envisioning possibilities to bring higher education to the village and to expand the project to bless 670 Guaranys with education.

Prayer, follow-up and flexibility are essential for a fruitful strategy
Our strategy is to sow the seed of vision, to provide initial tools, to encourage and coach church leaders, and to multiply sowers and coaches.  While discipling God’s people to disciple their nations, we use the phrase “wholistic ministry” to describe this love-in-action lifestyle of serving others.  This process is divided in four phases: (1) network, (2) training, (3) coaching, and (4) commissioning, using step-by-step applications of biblical teachings called “disciplines of love” and “seed projects” to disciple people to grow like Jesus.  In all phases, prayer and follow-up visits were essential components.  They enabled trainers and participants to listen to the Lord and submit to His direction in a long-term commitment of obedience to Him.

We measured, learned, and repeated the process in ways that the SamS program could become a scalable model. While doing this, we identified new frontiers, such as church leaders serving communities affected by human displacement like the South Sudanese Diaspora in Kenya, asylum seekers from Central America in the USA, the Brazilian Diaspora in Japan, Bolivian immigrants in Brazil, and Russian refugees in Ukraine.

In São Paulo, Brazil, a Bolivian family learned the love-in-action lifestyle and returned to their homeland where they became the caregivers of their 80-year-old mother.  They provided for her medical treatment, prayed with her on a regular basis, and connected the family with a local church where they received further help.

From Armenia, pastors who participated in the SamS project in Yeghegnadzor were called to serve in Kiev, Ukraine, where their new church was mostly of people from Russian territories.  Many of them lost their homes, belongings, and opportunities in life. The pastors wanted to teach their church that they also had something to give others, and that the Lord called them to love and minister to people in greater need, so they started a SamS project in Kiev.

From remote islands in the Philippines to urban churches in Peru, we reached to teach, so our commitment to meeting leaders where they were required flexibility. Among the 138 SamS projects done so far, no two models were the same and we have used different means to reach people. Whether it was through mobile phone apps in Ahmedabad, India, to battery-operated projectors in West Africa and in Honduras, or conversations under a mango tree in the Amazon, we have continually assessed the most effective ways to communicate God’s message.

Here is a description of the experience in Honduras: “We had problems with the beginning of the rains.  There was a very strong electrical storm.  We ended up without electricity and with a lot of noise with the rain falling on the metal sheets where the training was taking place. Thank God we could use a battery for the projector.  After the training session, we helped to take some leaders back to their homes, the road was flooded and there were fallen trees. All that was a good adventure. God always takes care of us. Thank you so much for your prayers and love for us.”

Trainings and partnerships marked turning points in many lives
The participants have witnessed about the impact that Harvest message made in their lives, as in a testimony from Ponta Grossa, Brazil: “The training was God’s response to my life. God placed in my heart the desire to do more for his work. To leave the four walls of the church. I started to pray, asking God to put people in my life who had the same desire, people who were more experienced, because I wanted to learn more, and from the beginning of the training I saw that God was answering my prayer.  When I heard about small attitudes, I soon remembered what I had as a principle for my life, it was just that. Especially in the Kingdom. It was a meaningful experience and, while listening, I didn’t want even to blink.  The desire to serve in missions increased a lot more. All the ideas that I thought were crazy in my head, I discovered that they were not, and that there were more people who thought the same things. Thoughts that a little attitude can make a big noise and, yes, the love of God transforms. I say that what I thought was crazy because the church itself says that it does not exist. But it was too incredible and I am already putting into practice some things that I wanted to do but was afraid of being misunderstood by the church. I was very scared to do some of these [small acts to show God’s love] because I was often ignored by the church staff who thought they did not exist. But I received an unusual injection of encouragement. This is amazing!”

There were 33,800 participants in Harvest training’s in the first semester of 2019.  They came through churches and organizations who share our values, complement our strengths, and contribute different skills, ensuring a greater harvest for God’s Kingdom. In Ethiopia, where participants witnessed that “the training was a turning point to understand what really means to follow Jesus Christ”, we partnered with the Evangelical Students’ and Graduates’ Union of Ethiopia.  In West Africa, Mercy Ships has had a long and fruitful history of collaboration with our associates.  In Peru, we partnered with Food for the Hungry and with the Fraternity of Pastors at the national level.  In the USA, with the Surge Network, John 17 Movement, and the African American Christian Clergy Coalition, with this to effect criminal justice reform. Thus we have seen that the integration of Harvest lessons into the day-to-day work of the leaders have enhanced Kingdom services in many areas.

“The seventy-two returned with joy”
Inspired by the Scriptures, disciplines of love and seed projects have helped build coping skills and foster nurturing connections between local churches and their communities. The content became both a tool and a catalyst for engagement between church leaders, church members, and communities, further deepening the impact of our collaborative model.  From churches accustomed to social ills like juvenile delinquency and prostitution, as mentioned by trainers from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Harvest associates around the world have helped people move from a theoretical message of love to tangible actions that changed lives.

From the point of view of our trainers, we received a comment from Nairobi, Kenya, “Our meetings are eliciting excitement, happiness and unity as people from three different regions of South Sudan living in Kenya come together for fellowship.  When the training began, the pastors wanted to share their experience with the implementation and so the first hour of our lesson was spent in story sharing. We celebrated the Lord for what he has done. As the leaders were sharing, the words of Jesus after the 72 came back from the field came to my mind: ‘The seventy-two returned with joy.’”

From Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, we received this report: “Pastors have been expressing God’s love in different ways, talking to a security worker and other staff at the agency where one of them is chairman of the board, praying for the youth and new believers in their church, cooking meals for youth fellowship, helping blind people move on the streets, a doctor expressed love toward the patients and their relatives by talking to them and sharing in their pain, one participant drove the children of other family to school every day and another participant started to be kind to his coworkers.”

With a deeper commitment to serve God, who commissioned us to envision and equip the Church to reflect Jesus, the Chief Servant, and along with our faithful donors and strong partners, we pray for opportunities to expand God’s Kingdom on a mass scale around the world for the next thirty-eight years and beyond.  The statistics of our mid-year report are below.  They show some aspects of the great work the Lord has done around the world and of our collective obedience to His calling.

Ministry activities in the first semester of 2019
With 270 trainers we came to a total of 138 SamS projects in 24 countries, with the participation of 1,006 churches.  The chart below shows the breakdown of our global activities.

Thank you
We are grateful to the Harvest global staff and to the participants in the SamS projects around the globe. Their servant spirit and collaboration blessed many people. We thank the donors who so generously contributed to this project, without their participation we would not be able to go that far. We praise the Lord for His provision, guidance, and protection, and  pray that this experience may be multiplied in many places for His glory.

Invitation to collaborate
Harvest Associates are volunteers who sacrificially give of themselves to this ministry. We welcome your participation to help them financially. You can write a check to «Harvest» and mail it to P. O. Box 2670 – Phoenix, AZ – 85002, or click on the «Donate» button on this page for a credit card donation. You can designate your gift to any Harvest worker. Visit our website at  www.harvestfoundation.org to learn more about their ministries.