Let me take a few minutes today to express some of the fullness I feel in my heart and to let you know a little bit about my own end of the year giving. There is a maternity home in the inner city of Chicago that’s being built right now and is run by African American Christians which is just kind of special. I have supported them before and when I think of my end of the year giving, I think of things that I’m really excited about. I am excited about sending them a gift to help them build that mother’s home in the inner city of Chicago.
There’s also a school up in Boston that I helped start over 20 years ago and at this time of the year, I get excited because I am going to write them a check. It’s certainly not as great a check as they get from other people, but every little bit helps, you know. I think that I’m like most people in that we have some things that we can give to you on a weekly or monthly basis then, at the end of the year, we get to do some special giving. I’m hoping that as I do this that you are going to do the same. I would love for you to remember Passion Life with your year end giving. I just want to take a few minutes to show you why I hope that you will be excited about us and want to partner with us in every way.
Right now, we are finishing up all of our travel for the year. We have a team in Chile. Mark Nicholson, as you may know, just got back from Medellin, Colombia, then he went to Kathmandu in Nepal, and then he went to Calcutta in India. He came home, spent a week and then took this team off to Chile from which they will be returning this week. That will finish off all of our travel for the year.
Mark’s wife, Janie, is the one who directs all of our work in Latin America. Nadu and Anderson are also there. Nadu organizes and gets all the pastors and leaders at our training sessions and Anderson helps us teach our four questions. That is our Latin America team and they are finishing up strong. They have been to Argentina for the first time this year. They went to Brazil for the first time and were also in Chile and Honduras for the first time this year. There are a lot of exciting things happening down there in Latin America with this team.
They just sent us back a couple pictures. One shows a couple of young people who were looking at the fetal models that we use in our training. Everywhere we go, we use fetal models and it always attracts a crowd. They want to look at the nine month old baby, the six month old baby, the three month old baby, and so on. There’s a strong, compelling desire to want to show it to somebody else too. And so we travel and communicate the value of human life with these models.
And in one of the pictures we see this father showing his daughter what she looked like at nine weeks. I’d love to send you one of these. If you haven’t gotten one already, we’ve been offering this for several weeks now. I’ll send it to you in this beautiful little bag called “tiny baby” and a card that reminds you of how big the baby is. And you can carry this around in your purse or whatever all over the world. The little image of a baby that one can hold is being the witness bearer to life within the womb worldwide. We’re very excited to be able to produce 50,000 to 200,000 of these in the coming year as our partners step forward to help us make them.They cost about a dollar a piece because they are 3D printed. So again, if you want to jump in and help, this is a great way to help. Just say, “Hey, I want to hand out 50 of these a month” and then make a pledge of 50 a month and you’re good to go.
Now I would like to discuss where we have been this year. We have traveled to 12 more countries in 2023, just like we did in 2022. We’ve been all over the world. We’ve been to China and India. We were unable to make it to Africa this year, but we were there last year and we’ll be there again next year. This year, we have really concentrated a lot of our efforts on Latin America. I also just returned, as you may know, from Romania. So we have been doing world missions with the gospel of life.
I want to show you one other highlight that just gives me a sense of fullness at the end of the year. We sent an independent research team, John Linden Associates, to Cuba in September, to sit down and interview all the mothers that had been rescued from abortion at two of our pregnancy help clinics in Cuba. They are just learning how to use ultrasound in this clinic. It’s a handheld ultrasound machine and it uses an iPad as the screen. An ultrasound is the thing that really initially arrests women and couple’s attention from moving forward under the temptation and the pressure of abortion. It slows them down. It doesn’t solve their situation.
There is a need to have Good Samaritans and to have a lot of practical help provided so that the life of the child, once revealed either by the tiny baby or through ultrasound, is followed up with helping couples get married, helping them find a job and helping them find some of the basic materials. This is really important in a place like Cuba, probably more so than any other place in the world that we go to. Abortion is being driven by the absolute poverty and sense of hopelessness that the people feel in Cuba in a way that I don’t see in other parts of the world.
Our team sent us an image of a grandmother sitting with her daughter and her granddaughter who was rescued from the pressures of abortion. This is the fruit of our work. This is one of the young mothers that was interviewed by this independent evaluation organization. We invited all these mothers to come back from around the Bayamo area and sit down for an interview and answer questions. We did this so that they could help us understand what made a life saving difference in their situation. Was it the ultrasound? Was it the offer of practical help? Was it helping them get married? Was it talking to their parents? What was it that made the difference? We want to learn as much as we can so that we can continue to grow more effectively.
This report is about to come out in the next couple of weeks and I have a copy of the cover that is going to be produced. It is called the PassionLife Impact Study Cuba by Linden Associates. I’d love to send you a copy of their independent report so that you can see the impact of all your prayers and all your giving. It’s part of the reason that I’m excited about the coming year. I hope that if you’ve got any year end giving to do, that you’ll think of Passion Life. I would love for you to become a regular or a monthly contributor in the same way I want to become a year end giver and a monthly supporter for some of the other things outside of Passion Life that I am also passionate about.
I think it’s really important for us to investigate who’s doing things well and to see that they are both trustworthy and impactful. I’m going to do that with the things that I give to you and I invite you to do that with PassionLife. And if we pass the test, join us because we’ve got another 12 or 15 countries that we want to get to in the coming year of 2024.
May God fill you with great joy in this season and give you a heart to want to do more with your time, your talent and your treasure. God bless.