This is our second year joining in the Advent Conspiracy.  This year our church of 500 raised $14,547.66 by committing to a simpler Christmas. Here is the breakdown:

· $600 to Jesus Our Firm Foundation Church in the Philippines for their children’s ministry

· $3011.92 for a Medical Clinic in India run by Brethren missionaries

· $3611.92 for a Brethren orphanage in Puerto Maldonado, Peru (on the edge of the Amazon) to provide fresh water (plus another $1001.19 left from last summer’s mission trip for a total of $4613.11).  They have a well, but this will allow them to build water storage tanks and run pipes to the buildings, which they have not been able to do at this point. 

· $1000 to sponsor two Spirit-Driven Soccer teams through Pump House Ministries in Ashland, OH

· $375 each for the Ashland Christian Health Clinic and the Ninth Street Dental Clinic, both in Ashland, OH

· $952.20 to purchase groceries for “Section 8” (zero income) residents of Martin House apartments in Ashland, OH

· $500 for partial scholarships to Financial Peace University

· $4121.62 for a Local Outreach fun that will be used to meet various requests in coming weeks and months. Our community has been hit hard by unemployment and we have multiple requests each week. 

· On top of this, we sponsored Christmas for 27 households in need, providing food and Christmas gifts and delivering the items on Christmas Eve.

To help people get a better understanding of Advent Conspiracy, we had members of our church body share their testimonies every Sunday morning throughout December.  We also hosted a November Advent Workshop where families could come and make simple, inexpensive, homemade gifts. 

We love participating in Advent Conspiracy and plan to continue doing so!  We feel like the majority of our people are really getting it and focusing on what Christmas is supposed to be about.  Thanks for all of your hard work and dedication to this cause.

Wende Lance- Executive Director
Park Street Brethren Church
Ashland, OH

We are in South Africa amongst some seriously poverty stricken people. Our church ran your promotional video for four weeks, and a lot of families did not give gifts this year and gave to our different projects. The children are the best. My little guys gave R50 each from their holiday money. A lot for them.

We had a Christmas party at a local school called Riversands Farm school in an underprivileged area called Diepsloot and gave 750 children gifts that they had personally asked for and a huge party with some of the cash donated. Our children came along and participated.

We have also had many people sharing how they simplified Christmas and how one family had a spit braai for the homeless.

I was reminded that the one and only group of people invited to the birth of Jesus were the shepherds as outies and possible homeless guys as well.

Thank you for you work and commitment to this project. We will be with you this year as well.

Peter Veysie-Senior Pastor
Ridgeway Ministries
Rivonia, Johannesburg
South Africa

I wanted to report in from Lancaster Vineyard Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  We had a great time participating in Advent Conspiracy again this year.

This year we collected $1200 which will be distributed 50% to Living Water, Intl and 50% to Love146.

I think people in our church grabbed hold of the concept of spending less in a greater way this year than last.  We had a number of stories of people making Christmas simpler in order to Worship Fully.

We had some great examples of people giving relationally this year.  My favorite was a woman who was brand new in our congregation as we were kicking off Advent Conspiracy this year, chose to ask her neighbors what their favorite charities were and instead of giving them gifts, she gave donations to those agencies in their names.  It was a great discussion starter.

It really seemed that people tried to spend more time at home focused on family this year and making memories.

Overall, I think this year had a deepening effect on our people of recognizing the plight of many throughout the world and how for so little we could change lives for so many.  I think this was
highlighted in the fact that we just brought our [adopted] daughter home from Ethiopia in September.  Our church had walked through that process with us for over a year, and now they knew someone who had been affected greatly by poverty, so this year Advent Conspiracy was a bit more personal for them...they had a face and a name to put with the poverty.

We also had about 20 people from the church participate in writing a daily devotional for families to read together daily, mostly centered around the Advent Conspiracy concepts.

It was a great time for us again this year.  Thank you for providing this wonderful opportunity to restore meaning to Christmas!

Jerry Shannon-Pastor
Lancaster Vineyard Church

Here at East Whittier UMC in southern California we were able to lift up the need for clean water around the world.  The amount received may seem small ( still counting but we think in the neighborhood of $300 - $400 ), but so far we have sent the monies to 3 different countries water well projects through the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

Two weeks ago a member of the congregation asked me if we can continue this emphasis throughout the year so we are going to be placing a simple water pitcher on the communion table every Sunday during worship time and then moving the pitcher to the baptismal font located in the lobby.  Again it may seem most ordinary - but we all know the extraordinary things God keeps doing through and with ordinary folks.

Tim Mull- Pastor
East Whittier UMC
Whittier, CA

I guess the big story is, that people gave this year in spite of record snowfalls and a pretty much locked down city. We had 3 solid weeks of Advent then a snowstorm that dumped almost 3 feet of snow in 24 hours on our city.  We canceled our 4th service of advent but opened up for Christmas Eve. We had an AC offering of $1845. Not huge, but for our church of 75 to 100 people it was pretty good. On top of the cash we had people who gave food and blankets to one of the ministries that we support (Our Place) “> and few people are now getting involved actually serving there.

We hope to keep going with this year after year.

Dave Wilkinson-Pastor
The Porch
Spokane, WA

We’ve been getting your newsletters for a few years now.
We took a small step this year and had an offering at our Christmas Eve Service. Something we have never done before.
We took up an offering for the “Place of Rescue” a ministry in Cambodia that works primarily with those affected by aids and child prostitution/slavery.
They have children, mothers with aids, grandmothers left to care for children.
Anyway, they do a great work.  http://www.placeofrescue.com/

Our offering was $425 Canadian and it was reading the AC material that inspired us to take this step and make a larger difference.  We have been focusing on our Advent preperation the last few years on the very things AC promotes.

Greg Dermody-Pastor
Assiniboia Alliance Church
Saskatchewan, Canada

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this! We were blessed by it. The Connection is a small and growing new church-start out of the Reformed Church in America. We just sent a check for $2,000 to Living Water International after taking a special offering over Christmas. Our people were so enthused to participate and give.

Travis Else-Pastor
The Connection
Harrisburg, SD

Every year at Christmas-time we do a “Birthday Gift for Jesus” kind of offering, a special gift of priority for the “honoree” if you will. Sometimes we pick certain projects, sometimes we offer a catalog to choose ways to donate - we always do some kind of local thing and an international thing. This year, with the economy in the toilet, we chose to have half our offering go towards our Benevolence Fund for needy families in our church and the other half for some kind of international project, of which there are a million, you know! I stumbled upon the Advent Conspiracy and loved the idea of reclaiming Christmas and providing clean water. The video was a definite selling point - AWESOME!! We were expecting, with the economy and our history, about $20,000 in this offering - imagine how we felt as the numbers kept going up and up, finally topping $50,000!!!! In the worst economy most of us have ever seen! Wow. God is good! So….we have over $20,000 in “well” money and will likely focus on Uganda since we have a long history there. We could not be more excited and will keep you posted on the well situation and send photos of our happy village in Uganda with their new clean water provided by a bunch of suburbanites in Ohio in the dead of winter!

Cindy Schmidt
Director of Missions and Outreach
New Life Church

Dear AC,
Our family chose not to exchange gifts for adults this year. Instead we signed up to serve a meal on Christmas Eve day at a rescue mission. We took the grandchildren along and they served bottles of water while we dished up the meal.
I was satisfied that although the task we did was nothing big, we made a conscious choice to give instead of receive. Hopefully it pleased the Lord and sent a message to the young ones about the way Christ wants us to live each and every day.

Jan Pierce
Vancouver, WA
Jon and Sara Walker
McCall, Idaho
Josh Pierce
Wn. D.C.

We are a small church in Pearl River, Louisiana - about 45 minutes north of New Orleans. In 2007, we held a Christmas Missions Offering that went really well. This year, we used some of the Advent Conspiracy material, and donated a total of $5416 (an average of over $50 per person). This was divided among mission projects - some local and some foreign. $1435 was donated to Living Water International.
Before I came to this church, there was virtually no missions giving, and this project, among other things, has helped open the eyes of our church to how God is working all over the world - and how we can contribute - even small amounts. I look forward to using Advent Conspiracy again - and to raising even more money next year.

Ben McGehee-Pastor
Pearl River UMC
Pearl River, Louisiana

We are in our third year of existence as a church and participated in the Advent Conspiracy for the first time this year.  It was a tremendous success and really helped us to rethink how we view the celebration of Christ’s birth.  Besides for asking people to spend half as much on gifts, we also had a water week, and a rice week.  During water week people drank water only and set aside the money they would have spent on other drinks to donate to Living Water.  We did a similar thing the next week, but challenged families to eat rice only for 3 dinners and put aside the money they would have spent on groceries or eating out.  I think all of these things really drove home the message of how blessed we are.  As I spoke through the four themes of Advent Conspiracy in my sermons, I was struck by a thought as I was writing my message one day.  It struck me that because of our participation and “sacrifices,” children that were going to die in 2009 from water-born illnesses were going to live and get healthy, and parents who were going to mourn the loss of their children would not have to endure that awful fate.  They instead would celebrate the presence of clean water in their community and would hopefully wonder what motivated people in America to provide it for them, and would find that the answer was Jesus. 

We are a church of 175, primarily young adults and families, in St. Joseph, MO and we collected over $13,000 this year towards the Advent Conspiracy.  Thank you for allowing us to be changed and to enter the story in new and amazing ways.

Bob Miller-Pastor
Wellspring Community Church
St. Joseph, MO

Our church took part in the Advent conspiracy for the first time this year, we average under 150 people but they gave over $3000 which we sent to Operation Blessing, Thanks for the inspiration!

Ken Sowers-Pastor
Prince of Peace Church

Dear AC: Thanks for all the great resources for the Advent Conspiracy.  We had a wonderful Advent because of it.  We set as a goal to raise $18,000 and ended up receiving $72,000!  We sent it to the Life Giving water fund to drill 8 wells in rural Zambia.

Mark Rowland-Pastor
Anderson Hills UMC
Cincinnati, OH

I just wanted to let you know how our Advent Conspiracy movement affected our church and community this Christmas season. This was the first year for us and many people responded in a positive and significant way. We focused on the 4 parts of advent with different suggestions for people to get involved - for instance on the Give more day we challenged the church to not come to our church building for a service that morning as usual - but to go out into the community and Be the Church!  It was fantastic to hear stories of people inviting their neighbors over for a brunch, delivering baking in their neighborhood, visiting nursing homes, serving in a soup kitchen, having family church at home...it was a great way for us to spend more time with others who we wouldn’t go to church with.  For spend less we raised money for Water Projects which we gave to 2 organizations we are involved with as a church- $30,000 was raised, and we know some just gave directly to the project of their choice. Praise God for all that clean water that was shared with others! We set up display about water projects and facts and even had a mo rope well that is used in some countries for people to try out - we had many pumping water from our well!  For Love more we hosted a special Christmas Party as staff of the church for International students and refugees in our church and community. We had a great time of eating foods from many cultures and visiting around the tables as we got to know these special new friends in our country. We continue to hear stories of how God impacted individuals this advent and ways they as individuals and families got involved.
Thanks for all your resources, help and for the God given idea of Advent Conspiracy...God worked through it all in our community and touched many hearts - helping us get away from the rush of Christmas and back to the real meaning of sharing our time, love and gifts with others in the name of Jesus.  What a blessing!

Maryanne Berge
Forest Grove Community Church
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Canada

We should probably raise around $1500 for wells in Haiti. we are going to repair a well in a village we already work with and give the rest to Haiti water project. a group of women in church along with a few artists created ornaments in the shape of water drops to help the people make the connection. we also moved the water table in the church across the room and made it “inconvenient” for people to get water while at mosaic to illustrate the point...people thought that was cool.

We printed our own Christmas card to have the mosaic peeps handout to their friends, with plenty of space to write a personal note...to encourage relational giving...thanks for the inspiration and the provoking unto good works...this is our second year conspiring to overthrow the empire of greed...this was the best yet.

Kevin Sutherland
Mosaic Miami
Miami, FL