Normandale Mission Outreach

The Global Mission and Social Ministry Committees have become Normandale Mission Outreach with many opportunities to serve our mission partners!

Members of the congregation can join a mission outreach cluster that focuses on one area, without the commitment of a monthly committee meeting. The matrix gives an overview of Normandale’s outreach ministries. Organized by the two-year Sunday School schedule of emphasis on one of our “foreign” ministries, it relates each of those minis-tries to a “local” partner, with more local partners listed further down. Support for all ministries continues through-out every year. Contact Pastor Dale for more information!

Appropriate to Sunday School, each “foreign” ministry emphasizes children’s welfare:

 Huch’uy Runa School provides holistic care to street kids in the Andean tourist town of Cusco. We help support operations. We also relate to ILEP, the Peruvian Lutheran Church, primarily through music and music educa-tion for children.
 At Ntalawanda, we’ve helped build a schoolhouse and provide it with electricity. We’ve also helped drill clean-water wells for the school compound.
 We’ve begun to investigate a new partnership with the Lutheran Church in Ranchi, India, to develop basic health care (especially for women and children).

Our “local” partners work with immigrant families:

 St. Paul’s builds community with Spanish-speaking (Latino) immigrants.
 SAYFSM (Sub-Saharan African Youth & Family Services in Minnesota) concentrates services to African immigrants with HIV/AIDS.
 Our missionary support is “local” because we help fund missionaries from our own community in the Twin Cities—Jim & Carol Sack to Japan and Dana Nelson & Tom Ososki to Cusco, Peru—in partnership with ELCA Global Mission and other churches, many in this metropolitan area.

Additional ongoing “local” ministries include:

 Normandale Housing & Community Development, Phillips Neighborhood
 VEAP (Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People): Edina, Richfield, Bloomington
 CES (Community Emergency Services): Phillips Neighborhood, Minneapolis
 Our Saviour’s Housing & Shelter: Phillips Neighborhood, Minneapolis

~ Help Support our Missionaries ~

“Missionary Support Charts” are up in the Narthex. Our pledged mission support is $120 each week for: Jim & Carol Sack and $120 for Dana Nelson & her family. We need $30 from 8 different persons/couples/families every week to meet our commitment.

Sign your name on the charts in as many places as you wish. You may designate if you want it listed in memory or honor of someone. We will list this in the weekly bul-letin.

Give your support on the Sunday of the week for which you have pledged (write “Missionary Support” on your check’s memo line). You can place your checks in the offering plate or give them to the receptionist in the church office.

Please remember to pray for the Sack & the Nelson families, especially during the week for which you have pledged support.

For updates on Dana Nelson, the first ELCA missionary in Peru click here.

God really does have a plan for us.

God really does have a plan for us. Even though I knew this all along, it took many twists and turns until I was convinced that God's plan was better than my own. Who would've guessed that a high schooler's adventure to Bangladesh on a youth mission trip in 1998 would turn into a calling for something greater? When I was preparing for my year of service with the ELCA Young Adult in Global Mission program, I was struck by the notion of accompaniment. It's not about doing. It's about being. What's so great about this is that we don't have to go half-way across the world to be. We can go to the Phillips neighborhood and be. We can celebrate Christmas with immigrants from various religions and cultures and be. Or we can go to Peru and just be. How amazing is that? We don't have to be pastors, or public speakers, or doctors to be. We can just be ourselves.

"As a servant for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you received." Ephesians 4:1

Sarah Kyalo