OCC: Operation Christmas Child is a ministry of Samaritan’s Purse. The goal is to send small Christmas gifts and the gospel to children in third world countries. Winn’s Baptist Church participates by working all year to gather items for the boxes. In November, we host our annual shoebox party where we assemble the boxes and prepare them to be shipped to a collection center. We host many other fundraisers throughout the year to help support this mission including, but not limited to, Sweet Frog Spirit Nights & Winn’s Baptist Church Annual Operation Christmas Child 5K Run/Walk.
Operation Christmas Child
2019 Shoebox Party!
Check out some pics from our annual Shoebox Packing Party!
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India/Nicaragua Missions
In addition to ongoing support of Southern Baptist Cooperative mission efforts, as church we support ongoing work in India and Nicaragua. We not only make financial provision for the locals who serve throughout the year but we send groups occasionally to participate hands on.
Nicaragua
India
Papua New Guinea
In 2018, Winn's Baptist Church adopted the DeCuir family to support in their mission work in Papua New Guinea. Information from their website detailing their mission and focus is below.
Our Vision: Our long term goal is to plant a church and translate the bible in a remote, tribal people group in Papua New Guinea. All across Papua New Guinea (PNG), there are hundreds of people groups that speak their own language - there are 840 living languages just in PNG, which is astonishing. Many of these people live out in the jungle and mountains and are too remote to access civilization. Most of the time they are animistic spirit worshippers - they worship their dead ancestors, the spirits of trees, rocks, clouds, animals, etc. When a few people groups were introduced to the gospel early on, the tribes around them noticed a change and wanted to know why they were so different. “Why don’t they want to kill anymore? Why did they stop doing their sorcery? Don’t they fear the spirits?” When they found out that the first tribe had the Word of the living God, they wanted to know about Him too. They started to send letters to the missionary headquarters. Here is one:
“What’s going on? Where is our help? Have you forgot about us? We of Sinou have not forgot about wanting a missionary, we carry a huge heavy constantly about this. We carry this heavy cause we fear for our lives. We know that the Bible says you should come and tell us. Us dark ones need it… how will we go to God’s place if not? Only those who know will go, how will we know if no one teaches us? That is the whole of my worry, we want a missionary now to give us God’s talk.”
— THE SINOU TRIBE
So our purpose is to be the answer to one of these letters, and engage one of these people groups who have been asking and waiting for missionaries. But how do we go about this? We will do five things:
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Learn their language and culture
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Create an alphabet for their unwritten language and teach them to read and write
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Translate God’s Word into their language
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Teach them God’s Word from beginning to end
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Teach them to teach others
This whole process will likely take us between 15 - 20 years. It’s a huge task. We will first spend a year in a town where we can learn the national language and culture and form a team with 2 other couples before moving out to the tribal area. Once we have made contact with a tribe and are invited to come to them, we will build our homes and move into one of the tribal villages. We'll start learning the language of the tribal people and hopefully can master it in about 3-4 years. At that point, we will teach through the Bible chronologically from Creation to the return of Christ! Lord willing, we will have some who believe and be able to start teaching through the New Testament epistles. From that point on we will spend years just discipling the believers and translating as much of the Bible as possible. If everything goes well, we will be able to ordain church leaders and begin working ourselves out of a job! Of course we will be translating the scriptures for them for several years but even after we leave the village we will still be involved in their lives, possibly taking trips back in every few months to be a resource and encouragement!
I know that's a lot and may sound intense, but we want to leave whatever tribe we end up in with a bible that they can read and understand, and we want the church to be led by their own men so they can be self-sufficient and not dependent on missionaries. There is a ton more involved in this that I haven't mentioned - medical aid, linguistics, pastor training, etc. so let me know if you have any questions about this process!
And of course, to do this ministry we have to have a team behind us! We have so many friends and family that faithfully support us so we can be the hands and feet of Christ in PNG. When referring to the task of reaching the unreached in India, William Carey said, "I will go down if you will hold the rope." We are so grateful to those that are holding our rope! This is a team effort and we are just one part of this team. If you want to "hold our rope" please click the button below to join our team!