Mission & Outreach
Global Connections
ELCA Earthquake relief
Our gifts and offerings are helping to provide food, water, medical supplies, shelter, and much more in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. As of May, ELCA Disaster Response has received $10.5 million for relief work in Haiti. In early 2010, St. Paul people gave over $7,200 in offerings earmarked for the ELCA and Lutheran World Relief.
Watch a video of ELCA relief efforts in Haiti»
Papua New Guinea
St. Paul supports ELCA missionaries
Our church has some new friends. Granted it will be a long-distance relationship. But we plan to grow in congregational friendship with Rod Nordby and Nancy Anderson, ELCA missionaries in Papua New Guinea (PNG).
Check your atlas. This small yet diverse country is in the south-western Pacific Ocean, adjacent to Indonesia, north of Australia.
Rod and Nancy will receive annual funding of $2000 from our Daily Ministry offerings. Through our new relationship, we hope to get acquainted by email and possibly furlough visits.
This missionary couple works in the Lutheran Church headquarters in Lae, the largest city in PNG. There Rod, a second-career ELCA pastor, serves as assistant auditor and church accompanier. Healthcare and accounting were his first vocation.
With her healthcare background, Nancy has volunteered in the past through the PeaceCorps and Project HOPE medical mission. She is serving in PNG wherever needed.
Rod and Nancy’s U.S. base is Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Pastor Matthew Marohl,
Tanzania
Iowa-Tanzania friendship
St. Paul congregation shares a companion friendship with the Bombo Lutheran Parish, a cluster of small churches in northeastern Tanzania, East Africa.
This partnership is grounded in prayer, study, communication, occasional travel, and people-to-people connections. A group of St. Paul people, calling themselves Team Tanzania, gives inspiration to this Iowa-Africa relationship.
Bombo Lutheran Parish is part of the Pare Diocese, where St. Paul members Todd and Lori Byerly served as ELCA missionaries for a number of years. Gonja Hospital contributes to healthcare in the area.
For more information, be in touch with Melanie & Tom Gellhaus, who have served as medical missionaries in Tanzania and other countries:
Goat news from Tanzania
Thanks to a St. Paul project, goats provide self-sufficiency for a number of Tanzanian farmers. St. Paul children and grown-ups filled special offering envelopes for Get Your Goat, a project to purchase goats for Bombo farmers in Tanzania.
Twenty female and four male Saaren goats were purchased and arrived in Bombo through Heifer International. Ten farmers received training for the goats’ care and built bandas to lodge the goats.
The original gift has increased, both in the number of goats and in the number of trained farmers. The farmers have organized into a cooperative called Neema, which means grace in Swahili.
Team Tanzania has allocated another $500 for goats, their care and treatment. Dan Wiese, in his second visit to Tanzania, will hand-deliver the check and a St. Paul letter of greeting to Pastor Peter Nzalla of Bombo.
One goat can provide sustainability for an entire family. The animal provides milk for family needs, and the excess milk can be sold for income. Recipients of the goats agree to share the offspring of gift animals with others in need, making them equal partners in the fight to end world hunger.
Contact Bill Whitmore, our resident goat expert,
Tanzanian resource
St. Paul members Todd and Lori Byerly, who served as missionaries in Tanzania, continue to be marvelous resources for our partnership with this African nation.
Whitmores in Tanzania
Bill and Kay Whitmore traveled to Tanzania to observe the goat project, meet the people, and help children born with club foot. Enjoy their photos —
"Who needs special effects when life itself is the most extraordinary special effect imaginable?" ~Michael Phillips, film critic, Chicago Tribune