By Charissa Toeller
The Missions Team and I are excited to introduce you to our newest missionary partner, Emily Lewis. If this name sounds familiar, it's because we've supported Emily's family as missionaries since 2006. In 2005, the Lewis family left their home in Pennsylvania and moved to Louisiana to launch the EFCA Crisis Response ministry in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Growing up on the mission field, Emily had many opportunities to serve alongside her parents and even lead crisis response job sites. She has traveled internationally extensively with her dad (Mark) and gained a great deal of practical and hands-on experience in the mission field. These experiences grew to a passion for the mission field. Emily was already using her skills of photography and storytelling to support her family's ministry, and she realized the tremendous potential to inspire her own generation to engage in missions. Based on the advice of a college mentor, Emily studied filmmaking, graphic design, and leadership so that she would have the tools to become an effective storyteller connecting American churches with people around the world who need to hear about the redeeming love of Jesus.
Emily is in the final stages of raising support to become the first Communications Director for Global Fingerprints, the child sponsorship ministry of the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA). As Global Fingerprints expands their leadership team, their vision is to see 10,000 kids sponsored in the next five to six years, which will more than double their current impact. As we've come to expect from EFCA ministries, not only does Global Fingerprints meet children's physical needs, they seek to disciple children to ultimately have a "vital relationship with God, strong character and Biblical worldview, who positively impact their church and community, who experience and create healthy lives and relationships, and who are educated and able to sustain themselves after leaving the program." Just like Crisis Response, Global Fingerprints sites never exist separately from a local church partnership or church planting process.
Save the Date: On Sunday, March 14th, Emily will be visiting and speaking at our 8:15 and 10:30am services (also livestreamed). At 9:30, any students in 5th-12th grades are welcome to join us in the Student Center to hang out with Emily and ask her any questions about what it's like to be a missionary.
Learn more about Global Fingerprints: https://sponsorship.globalfingerprints.org/about/
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