Jessica Panitzke serves at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Jessica designed a program from mothers and children as a way for her congregation to reach out to the community.

Where do I start? That is a question that plagues all of us whether we are asking about daily chores or our biggest challenges in life.  It rang over and over in my mind as I brainstormed ways for our church to reach out into our community. We had tried Vacation Bible School, Christmas for Kids, a Valentine’s Day event, fall festival, and still it seemed like no one came through our doors. I remember praying for guidance, for some way to meet people.  I hoped to create an early childhood program to reach families. But the same question came back to my mind – Where do I start? We didn’t have lots of space, money or man power; all the things needed to launch preschools and eye-catching programs. And so I began to brainstorm and pray.

After doing some research and applying some principles I learned at Martin Luther College I began to write a curriculum for “Mornings with Mommy.”  It would be a new take on the mommy and me class concept with an educational twist. I knew moms would be asking what it was all about so I shared this information about our program on our website and in brochures- “What is Mornings with Mommy? Mornings with Mommy isn’t preschool, and it isn’t childcare, it’s something different. Mornings with Mommy is a fun and easy way for you to enjoy activities with your children and meet other Moms. There will be age appropriate activities for infants, toddlers and preschoolers. And the best part is, we do all the planning, you just sign up! Moms can mingle with each other and enjoy activities with their children including: arts and crafts, sensory table, flannel stories and story time, music, educational toys, and a snack.”

View photos on flickr

A year after we arrived here at Shepherd of the Hills in Knoxville, Tennessee we launched our first Mornings with Mommy session in August 2009. We hoped to run two different hour long sessions each month.  Our “Under the Sea” session was a huge hit! So much so that after running the program a few times, we had a waiting list and opened encore sessions.  We had a place to start!  We had people coming through our doors.  And many of them had no church home or had recently moved to Knoxville.  This was the opportunity that we were looking for! While it would take time, this was our chance to build relationships and share the gospel.

Since that first session we have been blessed with running the program for almost 4 years. We’ve run multiple sessions and had a TCW team help run it for a summer with multiple encore days.  Over 500 different families have attended Mornings with Mommy!  And about one fourth of them listed no home church. We’ve seen an increase in families visiting our congregation from Mornings with Mommy.  Children have been baptized and families have joined our church.  Our congregation became excited about the opportunities we had to share the Gospel.  They got involved—I can’t imagine all of this happening without all their help!  We are even moving ahead with a building project so that we can launch a preschool in January of 2014.

I always hoped to share this program with other churches. So I began putting the curriculum together in a very user friendly way for congregations. There are about 15 WELS congregations running the program now in South Carolina, California, Florida, Minnesota, South Dakota, Georgia, and Colorado. If you are interested in information please find contact information at http://www.knoxvilleshepherd.com/for an informational packet.  I look forward to all the ways our Lord is using this program to share his gospel. And for all this I praise the Lord!

Sean Young is Director of Missions Operations for WELS.  He began working with WELS Missions in 2012.  Young writes about the privilege of serving in his position.

My name is Sean Young and I have been blessed with the opportunity to serve our church body as the new Director of Missions Operations in the Missions office. My background wasn’t in mission work beyond being the evangelism chair at my local church in Verona, Wisconsin. What I bring to the table is an unwavering willingness to serve the Lord through our church body in any way I can. I do this by utilizing my God given gifts of operational management to assist those missionaries we have in the field both within the United States and those whose calls have taken them around the world.

Granted, when I applied for this position I didn’t have anywhere near a full understanding of what it is we did as a synod in the area of mission work.  Sure, I knew we put out a DVD entitled Road to Emmaus. I also knew we had someone in Haiti somewhere, but that was the extent of my knowledge of what my church body  did. That, coupled with the fact that I had never left the United States before January 2012 should help establish that I am your “average” WELS member sitting in church on any given Sunday morning.

Now that I’ve had the opportunity to work with the majority of our missionaries both here in the U.S. and abroad, I have a much better understanding of how we carry out the Great Commission! Imagine my excitement when the Board for World Missions (the governing board for all of our mission work around the globe) asked me to visit one of our mission fields up close and personal by traveling to Cameroon, Africa. This is an exciting, once-in-a-lifetime chance for me to learn first-hand of both the blessings and challenges our called workers face while serving in a foreign land. While this won’t be my first venture into a mission field (I have been able to visit our missionaries in Mexico and on the Apache reservation), it will be my first visit overseas.

A friend of mine asked me what I was going to do to prepare for the trip, and I didn’t have an answer.  Should I start talking to past visitors and missionaries on how they handled their preparations? Find out what kind of shots and visas I’ll need to enter Africa? Look into how I was going to get there? What about food? As you can imagine, my mind was going in a hundred different directions as I started to realize that I would be in Africa soon.

Then I just stopped. I stopped and began to pray that the Lord guide and protect me and Pastor Mohlke during our travels. I also asked that He give me the strength to do something that I would have never, ever even contemplated doing less than 12 months ago.  Now I am letting the Word do the work, and all of my worries and concerns are melting away.

Patricia Boettcher is a member of St Lucas Evangelical Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI.  Boettcher writes about her congregation’s partnership with and support of a Zambian congregation.

St. Lucas Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, first came into contact with the Ndola congregation in 1982.  We were celebrating our 110th Anniversary that year and it was decided that as our Thank Offering we wanted to build a chapel in Africa.  That chapel turned out to be St. John’s.

This past October St. Lucas celebrated its 140th Anniversary and it was decided we would do something for St. John’s.  Missionary Dan Sargent helped us learn more about the needs of St. John’s.  He knew that they were renovating their parsonage for a cost of around $5,000.  Our committee and council approved this as our Thank Offering and also added that anything above that amount would be sent to the Lutheran Church of Central Africa.  In February the goal of $5,000 was reached and was sent to them through the synod’s missions office.  Funds will continue to be collected for the LCCA.

A member of our Lutheran Women’s Missionary Society made a large banner which Missionary Sargent presented to St. John’s.  Several other ladies have made Bible Bags and Banners for the Bible Institute in Lilongwe and Pill Bags and Sun Hats for the Lutheran Mobile Clinic in Lilongwe.

Our school children collected funds for St. John’s Sunday School children as their fall mission project.

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Missionary Dan Sargent writes:  “I was in Ndola on the 21st of April for service at Mt. Sinai and St. John’s Kabushi.  I was able to present the banner to the members at St. John.  The choir sang a number of songs in praise of God for the generous gift the congregation is about to receive.

The congregation is working with the LCCA Board of Trustees and the Ndola City Council to follow all the regulations concerning the renovations of the parsonage.  According to LCCA policy,  the congregation will continue to contribute 20% toward the project.  This gift will be accounted for though the LCCA Church Development Fund and embarked for St. John’s Kabushi.”

Michael Hartman serves as a missionary in Mexico.  Hartman recently attended a workshop whose focus was on improving skills in Biblical Greek.

In February 2013, 10 WELS world missionaries met to improve their language skills. During the time spent together, these men didn’t focus on languages spoken in the countries they serve, such as Spanish, Russian, or Chichewa. Rather, they attended a workshop held in Israel, where ancient tongues abound, to learn a new way to teach Greek.

Why do missionaries want to improve their Greek skills? The idea goes back hundreds of years. As Martin Luther penned, if a church body does not have the ability to work in the original languages, it will lose the Gospel. Since then, Lutheran churches have focused on enabling leaders to use Greek and Hebrew to remain true to God’s teaching. Today, WELS continues to emphasize original languages.

The same focus holds true in world missions. Training leaders to use the Bible’s original languages is a key ingredient for building new church bodies, notes Missionary Michael Hartman.

“As Luther’s ability to use Greek and Hebrew matured, so did his understanding of Scripture,” Hartman explains. “We have the same goal for leaders in churches around the world where WELS is doing mission work.”

Here, you’ll see a short recap of what missionaries learned at the Greek workshop and how they are applying it back on their fields.

Brad Wordell serves as the Coordinator for Asian publications for Multi Language Publications and as a part-time missionary in Japan. Wordell writes about the recent installation of a national pastor.

Pastor Daisuke Nakamoto was installed as the new pastor at Aganai (Redemption) Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tokyo, Japan, in April. Nakamoto graduated from the Pastoral Studies Institute in the United States in 2006 and served for two years as a pastor/evangelist at Bloomington, Bloomington, Minn., before returning to Japan with his family. He then served a vicar year in Mito, Japan. The Lutheran Evangelical Christian Church in Japan now has four national pastors serving 380 souls.

This is the first time in Aganai’s history that it has a resident Japanese pastor. Until now the congregation has been served by expatriate missionaries, most recently Missionary Brad Wordell. Wordell continues to serve in Japan but will be devoting most of his time to his new position of coordinator of Asian publications for Multi-Language Publications. Pastor Nakamoto, because he is a native speaker of Japanese, is well equipped to do counseling, family ministry, and ministry to children/young people.