A Gift Worth Giving // M-Note 12.6.2025

The Gathering has a tradition of giving away 100% of our Christmas Eve offering to give a gift that celebrates Christ’s birth and changes lives. For 15 years, we have partnered with the United Methodist Church in Mozambique to dig wells in villages all over the country. This work has provided clean water to over half a million people. Once access to safe water is stabilized in a place, it naturally leads to opportunities to invest in other resources that can improve the lives of the people there. To that end, we have also built a school and provided health and hygiene resources in villages where wells now exist.
 
Every year leading up to Christmas, we ask our partners in Mozambique about their most urgent needs and the ways they want us to partner with them. This year, a special need arose. Cambine is a mission and village in central Mozambique where we have dug wells and visited multiple times. That village has a deteriorating health center that, among other things, houses a maternity ward, mother’s waiting house, and pre/post-natal children’s clinic. More and more women are coming to the health center to give birth, but the facilities are very old and more capacity is needed. A new maternity ward is being constructed currently, but our partners have a dream of also building a brand-new mother’s waiting house, children’s clinic, and laundry facility. These three buildings will cost approximately $350,000. Under normal circumstances, a project of this cost and scale would take a long time to come to fruition in Mozambique.
 
The Gathering, along with our partners, decided this was a gift worth giving. This year, 100% of our offering will fund these three facilities. The mother’s waiting house will provide a safe place for women with high risk pregnancies to stay until they begin labor. The clinic will provide a place for women, newborns, and children to receive vital, comprehensive pre- and post-natal care. Finally, a laundry facility will replace hand washing (now that there is a well) and dramatically improve hygiene. All three of these facilities will make a dramatic difference in the survival rates of newborns and mothers.
 
Here is the good news— we will continue to dig and repair wells with resources we already have, while using this year’s offering to fund a gift that will make an immediate difference in the lives of women and children in Mozambique. I can’t think of a better way to honor the birth of Christ than to help provide women and children in Mozambique the healthcare that we so often take for granted. And the even better news? Last year’s Christmas Eve offering was $350,000! We can do that again, and fund all three of these buildings immediately!
 
Friends, giving away our Christmas Eve offering to honor Christ and impact lives has become one of my favorite parts of Christmas. I hope it is for you as well.
 
All our Christmas Eve services are here, so plan which one YOU will attend.  So as you get ready to worship this Christmas, make sure to invite others to join you AND to be ready to give the most meaningful gift you will give!
 
Peace,
Matt
 
P.S. In addition to 13 Christmas Eve services (three early and ten on the 24th), we’ll be hosting two Kids Christmas services on December 19th & 20th. So, put on your favorite Christmas PJs and join us for a joyful, family-friendly celebration featuring an upbeat worship experience, an interactive telling of the Christmas story, Cookie decorating and hot chocolate, a Christmas movie, and a petting zoo with animals like those from the manger. Plus, there’s a sensory-friendly hour on Saturday set aside just for families with those needs. You’ll find all the details and times here.