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"Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms"
1 Peter 4:10 Merry Christmas! We hope you are having a wonderful holiday season and spending time with family and friends. Our prayer is that you have time to slow down and reflect on this time of year as we celebrate the birth of our Savior. We have been very busy at E4 Project the last couple of months and are looking forward to this opportunity as well. As many of you may be aware, E4 Project had the opportunity to visit with a few of our church partners in November. We were blessed to have Pastor Jacob Mouele, from Gabon, join us as we visited churches in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. We shared how we have seen God at work in Gabon and Congo: people coming to Christ through family stabilization programs, wheelchair distributions, subsidized medical care, counseling, scholarships for nursing students, weekly distributions of food for malnourished children in Congo, and the opening of a new medical clinic in Libreville. Your generous gifts equipped and empowered our partners’ ministries to serve the poor and needy in their communities.
As we spoke at these churches, we encouraged everyone to engage with E4 Project by using their unique gifts from our Heavenly Father. The beauty of what God has done above is that it represents many different people coming together to offer their gifts of service to those in need. This includes many people from different countries doing the following:
- Volunteering their time or giving up their vacations to participate in this work
- Giving their lives in service to help the less fortunate
- People in the field committing their lives to serve in ministry by learning nursing, bookkeeping, or becoming lab technicians through E4 scholarships
- Donating both here in the States and in each country to provide for these programs
- Pastors and/or chaplains coming alongside these programs to share the hope we all have in the Gospel
Each of us has gifts from God so that we can serve others in the name of Christ. Closing out each service during these visits, we used the analogy of a puzzle piece to represent each individual’s gifts. We all have a piece of the puzzle, but it is not until we all come together and use our gifts collectively that we begin to see a glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven.
As we start putting the puzzle together, we may think that the corner pieces or the edge pieces are more important than others, or we may see many pieces that all look the same. But each piece is unique and essential to completing the puzzle, just as we are all unique in God’s eyes and essential to God’s purpose.
I am so encouraged as we close out another year to see how all the puzzle pieces of 2022 have come together and the picture that has been made. People's lives have been changed through the work we do together. The Gospel is being proclaimed to the poor and needy. The churches in Gabon and Congo are meeting the needs of their communities through the collective work of E4 Project.
As we head into 2023, I would like to ask you to consider your piece in this puzzle. What is God asking you to do? God has been faithful to us and we are convinced that He will continue to carry out this work. Just like the finished puzzle below, all the pieces are necessary to complete the picture. We invite you to join us.
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