Urban Plunge This Weekend

Our annual Urban Plunge is coming up this MLK Jr. Weekend, January 16-18th. This weekend is geared towards middle schoolers who want to serve in their own backyard and learn more about life in an urban setting. We have some great activities planned this year, including working with a food bank, serving dinner at a homeless shelter, and working with two transitional living facilities, as well as various cultural activities including two worship services quite different than MIPC, using urban public transportation, sampling alternative cuisine, and learning more about refugees in Seattle. I am very excited about this weekend, it is always a great time to watch our students grow and be challenged in thinking deeper about missions and life that is different from their own.
-Alan Waite, Middle School Director

Prayer for Haiti from PCUSA Disaster Relief Website

God of compassion
Please watch over the people of Haiti,
And weave out of these terrible happenings
wonders of goodness and grace.
Surround those who have been affected by tragedy
With a sense of your present love,
And hold them in faith.
Though they are lost in grief,
May they find you and be comforted;
Guide us as a church
To find ways of providing assistance
that heals wounds and provides hope.
Help us to remember that when one of your children suffer
We all suffer.
Through Jesus Christ who was dead, but lives
and rules this world with you. Amen.
(Adapted from Book of Common Worship)

To donate to PCUSA Disaster Relief for Haiti, go the PCUSA website, www.pcusa.org, and you may donate on that page to get funds there as quickly as possible.

Or you may send a check to MIPC-Haiti, and we will send all the checks to PCUSA Disaster Relief.

Education in Tijuana at Casa Azul

As part of the Homes Without Boundaries Education Program, Casa Azul provides an afterschool tutoring space for 20 scholarship children as well as 20 students from the community. The Education Committee is thrilled that 20 more students from the community come in for tutoring help.

Homes Without Boundaries supports MIPC's house building program in Tijuana.

Medical Mission Continues in Vietnam

This March MIPC doctors Carter Hill and Graham Nichol will continue their medical work in Vietnam. Dr. Hill and his team will teach emergency medicine to doctors in Hue. This has been an multi-year project between a medical team from Seattle and doctors in Vietnam, led by Dr. Hill.

In addition, Dr. Graham Nichol, with a team of three other doctors, will teach a seminar in emergency medicine to 96 deans of medicine from medical schools in Vietnam and 4 deans from outside Vietnam. The Minister of Health in Vietnam wants this standard of emergency medical care to be implemented in all medical schools in Vietnam.

Middle Schoolers Provide Clean Water for Over Nine Families in Africa

Middle School Ministries took their annual offering at LIVE (Tuesday evening youth group) on December 15th’s Christmas LIVE. The offering was for Blood:Water Mission, an organization that seeks to provide safe drinking water for families in Africa. For $85, a family will be provided with a bio-sand filter for their home to cut down on disease from the local well. Our middle school students brought in $783.50 in one night, enough to provide over 9 families with clean drinking water for the next 20 years!! Amazing! For more information, check out www.bloodwatermission.org

Have You Heard About Microsavings to Help the Poor?

NY Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, wrote about microsavings in one of his recent columns. He says, “One of the ugly secrets of global poverty is that a good deal of suffering is caused not only by low incomes but also by bad spending decisions. Research suggests that the world’s poorest families (typically the men in those families) spend about 20% of their incomes on a combination of alcohol, cigarettes, prostitution, soft drinks and extravagant festivals.”

Kristof goes on to say that those men don’t have a secure way to save money and neither do poor people in general.

In Kenya, two economists paid the fees to open small bank accounts for peddlers. Within six months, the women peddlers invested 40% more in their businesses, mostly buying more goods to be resold.

Kristof concludes, “The world’s poor might benefit hugely from the ability to bank their money safely.” Check out www.matchsavings.org to learn more.

Thanks from Van Asselt Elementary in Seattle

Missions was able to make a donation for a new playground at Van Asselt Elementary School in Seattle, responding to a request from MIPC member Jeanine Fitch, a student teacher there. El Doris Turner, Principal at Van Asselt, sent us a thank you note for our "incredible support and generosity for the playground build project." MIPC Missions already supports Seattle Schools through our tutoring project at Asa Mercer Middle School and also welcomed the chance to support Jeanine in her student teaching experience. Van Asselt has one of the highest free and reduced lunch programs in Seattle schools.