Dear friends in ministry,<\/p>\n
This summer a unique opportunity came to me\/us to help 125,000 Iraqi Christian families who have been displaced by ISIS in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq.\u00a0 The connection is truly a \u201cGod thing\u201d which I\u2019m glad to explain when you have some time.<\/p>\n
At present there are 1.8 million IDPs (internally displaced people) in the Kurdistan region who have fled from the region in Northern Iraq known as the Plains of Nineveh and other parts of the country.\u00a0 This means the Kurdistan region has 30% more mouths to feed, shelters to construct, and waste to dispose of, in addition to the educational and medical challenges presented. The people are thankful to be alive, but naturally missing the comforts and conveniences of their homes.\u00a0 They are now hoping and praying that the crisis will end soon; that ISIS will be defeated so they can move back to their homes to begin life anew.\u00a0 Please pray<\/strong> with them that this crisis will end soon.<\/p>\n Through a personal friend and \u2018man of peace\u2019 in their State Department, we have been asked by the Kurdistan Ministry of Christian Affairs to help 125,000 Christian families with financial assistance to purchase generators, fuel, cooling units, medical supplies and Quonset huts for school rooms and medical clinics.<\/strong>\u00a0 Sherwood Oaks launched a campaign last Sunday through December to raise $30,000 in assistance.\u00a0 We are asking our church family to consider making donations as alternative Christmas gifts.<\/p>\n We would love to make it a community-wide effort. I want to invite you and your congregations to join us in this effort. I\u2019m attaching our brochure that can easily be tweaked for use with your congregation if you\u2019d like to jump in.\u00a0 The Director of Christian Affairs is planning to visit Bloomington in mid-January.\u00a0 I\u2019m planning to organize a visit to Erbil in April to meet with Christian leaders there. You are welcome to partner with us at any level that is comfortable for you.\u00a0 Let me know if you want more info.<\/p>\n Please take a look at the 2min Vimeo that we used to launch the campaign:\u00a0 https:\/\/vimeo.com\/187835784<\/a>.<\/p>\n Blessings,<\/p>\n Brad Pontius Click for Brochure:\u00a0IDP Initiative Flyer<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear friends in ministry, This summer a unique opportunity came to me\/us to help 125,000 Iraqi Christian families who have been displaced by ISIS in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq.\u00a0 The connection is truly a \u201cGod thing\u201d which I\u2019m glad to explain when you have some time. At present there are 1.8 million IDPs (internally displaced people) in the Kurdistan region who… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[63,64,65],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","tag-iraq","tag-opportunity","tag-relief","xfolkentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":690,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSherwood Oaks Global Outreach
\n812-345-3028<\/p>\n