We want to say thank you again for partnering with us this last year. Although 2009 proved to be a challenging year in many respects, the Lord continued to delight us by the love He is showing the Church and her children around the world. The impact has been remarkable!

Here are just a few highlights:

In China | Our First One Million Children Country

• First official children’s Bible curriculum printing since 1949 projected to ultimately impact 1,120,000 Chinese Christians; 960,000 children
• Continued to expand Chinese website with downloadable lesson plans and training materials
• Building an inspired teacher network in 15 provinces

In South Africa | Preparing for Continental Roll-out

• On-field ministry officially transitioned to independent South African entity
• Training and distribution plan now in place for capacity building
• Exporting indigenous iVangeli curriculum for use in over 20 other African countries

Around the World | Breaking New Ground

• Ready to start development of children’s Bible resources for Messianic congregations in English and Hebrew for use in Israel and the United States
• Transitioning towards self-sustainability in nine Eastern Europe/former USSR countries
• Building three Nelson Mandela’s Foster Homes for AIDs Orphans

Please continue to pray with us as we enter this new year. We believe 2010 will be another anointed year and are so glad you are part of this ministry with us.

There are only two ways to receive an invitation. The first way to receive an invitation is to contribute at least $1,000 or $83 per month to Gospel Light Worldwide to help 1,000 children enter and grow in a personal relationship with Jesus; as part of their One Million Children campaign. The second is to be invited by someone who is already a member.

A hope chest is a place where unmarried young women keep special items in anticipation of future marriages or married lives. Henrietta Mears never married but she did raise up over 400 of the most influential Christians of the 20^th century including Billy Graham, Bill Bright and Richard Halverson.

She was known for her world travels and working amongst the glitz and glamour of Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s. Henrietta Mears had the courage and faith to dream big and she inspired others to do the same.  Simply known as “Teacher” to her students, Henrietta was bigger than life and like Oprah today, she helped shape America and the world.

Henrietta said, “Youth do not think into the future far enough. Therefore, we must encourage them to dream of great tomorrows.” She also helped millions of people with her simple, insightful and bestselling book, What the Bible is All About.

Henrietta’s Hope chest is currently offered in a Beta version.

In 2003, Gospel Light Worldwide began researching the need for children’s Bible resources in China. Church leaders readily acknowledged the absence of available materials and teaching expertise to meet the growing demands of the local church, regardless of size or registration status.

Immediately, we began developing the resident team needed to create a homegrown children’s Bible curriculum and related teacher training resources for Mainland China and her children. Our approach is to work backwards from the desired result of blessing the entire Chinese Church with the teaching resources necessary for any church to establish a comprehensive, practical and sustainable children’s Bible ministry program.

Accretion is built into our plan. Best estimates suggested a 10-year development cycle to Church self-sustainability.

We have now reached the milestone of finishing four complete years of four different age groups of children’s Bible curriculum and teaching resources. All along the way, we have tested over 10,000 copies of these materials with churches, of all kinds and sizes, across China. This milestone was the validation needed before transitioning into more widespread distribution.

As part of this planned roll-out, we recently developed and launched a Chinese language website specifically to offer downloadable lesson plans and training materials for anyone to use free. With 191 cities with more than one million residents, a comprehensive and viral Urban Strategy is vital.

At your convenience, please visit www.glww.org/china to see how intuitive this website is even for non-Chinese speakers. While we anticipated increasing monthly website usage as word-of-mouth spread, we did not expect what happened next.

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Thank you again for your interest.

A great way to get your community involved is  to show the One Million Children movie at your church. The movie helps people feel and understand the positive impact God’s Word has on children, their families and communities.

This movie is really important. We don’t want anything to get in the way of you and your church seeing this movie that we’ll even send it to you for free!

Here are some ideas how to get the most out of your Church Movie Night:

Promote Your Event |  Everything you need is included on the DVD or the One Million Children website. Print posters and hang them in places of high visibility. Print postcards and hand them out to friends at work and others in the community. Put church notices and put them in your church bulletin.

What To Do on the Night of the Event | Make One Million Children the sole focus of your evening. Have someone give a welcome your guests and introduce the film. When the movie has finished, offer a chance to participate by discussing the film and  passing out the donation forms (also on the DVD and website) that will be collected as people leave.

After the Event |  Report the following week at church about the event and how you did. You may want to even have a second showing for those who missed it.

Then, give it to another church or add the movie to your church library for future use.

For More Information | Please visit the One Million Children website.

Over 70 years ago, the legendary Bible teacher and Gospel Light founder Henrietta Mears established the foundation of Gospel Light Worldwide to fulfill one vital purpose: to put the best possible Bible teaching tools into the hands of teachers and learners around the world.Helping children enter and grow in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through culturally relevant children’s Bible study and curriculum is our only priority.

One Million Children | We want to invite you to join us in something so big that we are still having trouble wrapping our minds around it. We had been praying for God’s direction and received a heart to help One Million Children around the world enter and grow in personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Just the idea of One Million Children made our hearts leap. Does it do the same thing for you?

Spreading the Gospel Light Worldwide | Once you leave the United States, the concept of children’s Bible study or Sunday School curriculum is still something of an innovation. We are finding an insatiable hunger for these Bible teaching tools as we work with local churches and other international ministries around the globe to translate God’s Word for Children with cultural relevance and sensitivities into the native languages of their hearts. Be sure to take a look at what God is doing in China and South Africa.

Cross Cultural Ministry | Currently, we are developing culturally relevant Bible study and curriculum for children in some of the most difficult places around the world. From Eastern Europe to the Middle East, we are working with all branches of Christendom – Orthodox, Evangelical and Catholic to accomplish this historic undertaking. These are pioneering efforts bring children’s Bible study and curriculum where there has been none for centuries.

In this year we made serious effort to popularizing and propagate the project in country by training sessions…In FY 07 the project granted support, assistance, training and materials for 500 priests and religion teachers. The beneficiaries were priests who work in parishes where we are doing the trainings and religion teachers from the schools in their area.

Progress Report
Curriculum Translated
Age 12, Part 2
Curriculum Translated and Contextualized
Age 12, Part 1
Curriculum Translated, Contextualized and Printed
Age 8, Part I and II, with Teacher’s Manual

Teacher Training and Religious Education
500 priests and religion teachers have been trained. 1,900 parishes out of a total 15,000 parishes in the Romanian Orthodox Church are using this curriculum and and estimated 40,000 children from these parishes attend classes, with about 20-25 students per class.

Teacher Training and Religious Education
20 teacher trainers and 45 teachers have been trained. Textbooks are being used in about 500 out of 27,000 Russian Orthodox parishes. Estimated weekly usage is between 5,000 to 10,000 students. Usually classes are held once a week and the average number of pupils per classroom is 10 to 15 persons.

The textbooks are on the official list of books recommended by the Church for Sunday school hours and public school extra-curriculum lessons of Orthodox culture. New teacher training, supported by the Ministry of Religious Education in Moscow is dependent on the completion of the Age 14 – part II student books and teacher manuals, per an agreement with Moscow.