Christmas Toys Ministry 2023
Last year, we were blessed to love on thousands of children, gifting over 4,000 toys, cups of hot chocolate, and holiday bread to every child following a Gospel skit and presentation by our team. We also gifted bags of rice, vegetable oil, spaghetti, radishes, fruit, potatoes, and sugar to each family. The Christmas Toys ministry is our 2nd largest evangelistic outreach of the year.
In every village we visit, we gift a small toy to represent our love for each individual child, along with a loaf of holiday bread, and a cup hot chocolate (a Peruvian holiday tradition). We hand out these gifts following a fun and interactive presentation of a Gospel program filled with dancing, singing, and storytelling. The program provides a sense of hope, love, and security to all of the children and their families. To learn/know that there are people around the world praying for them, an organization that loves them, and a community of Christians that can be depended upon throughout the year is transformational and hugely impactful for many of the families that we are able to bless through this ministry.
Next, the connections that we make through this ministry provides a glimpse of the network that our organization provides. To have a network of villages that support one another in faith, business, and communal assistance is a foreign concept in many 3rd world countries, and we are proud to offer those connections to villages and help facilitate conversations for villages that are newly discovering our organization.
Finally, the Christmas Toys Ministry offers a long-term relationship with our organization. Through the relationships that we make through programs like the Christmas Toys Ministry, we invite key leaders of the village to attend our seminary and conference gatherings throughout the year, and also exchange key contact information in case there are natural disasters or other needs that arise in the village. These key contacts that we make through this ministry have proven very providential in the work that we are accomplishing in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, and we can’t wait to see where God takes us next!