From Our Family Pastor, Dennis Johns:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV
To know that God is working all around us in accomplishing His will is a comforting thought in a crazy world.
FBCTC has had a presence in the Rio Grande Valley for the past few Christmas seasons with the delivery of Christmas Shoeboxes and “Good News” to children in low income neighborhoods. It has been a blessing to see the smiles on faces when the children open and rummage through their box of goodies. It is more of a blessing to see students and adults sitting with those children and, even if only for an hour or so, experience true koinonia with those who we barely even know.
Unfortunately, we will not be traveling to the Valley this season. Hopefully we will resume when group travel is deemed safe and logistics are favorable. Our interim replacement project will continue to bless children and I believe is a great alternative during these uncertain times. We will be participating in the Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child - online. With just a few clicks and a gift of $25, you can pack a shoebox gift online and help share the Good News with a girl or boy in need around the world. You can access the Operation Christmas Child site through our website, fbctc.com.
Understand that the personal touch of this project may be perceived to be absent, but please don’t miss that the end result of the gift of Good News will continue to be shared ever so effectively through other hands. “His ways are higher than ours.” We do face further challenges in these days of the “new normal” with limited personal contact and face to face interaction. God will see us through this season as well, and perhaps we are to seek new and intentional ways of connecting in fellowship with others in this time.
Koinonia; our pastor has expressed in simple definition; “when the Jesus in me meets the Jesus in you.” There is something special about that connection that happens when God shows up in our encounters with others… it seems to transpire more readily when we are in a giving posture. May we not be limited by “our thoughts.”