GLOBAL VOICES
This Year's Thanksgiving Eve Offering Recipients THREE PROJECTS
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Media Associates International/ LittWorld 2022
Missionary: John Maust
Bringing Christian Truths to Life Around the World
Given the fresh challenges and opportunities for Christian publishing in our pandemic world, we face a particularly strategic time for global Christian communicators to gather for mutual equipping, encouragement and vision-sharing. Next year’s LittWorld Conference 2022 “Stronger Together: Publishing Hope Beyond Crisis” will provide fresh vision and skills for some 200 publishing staff and writers from 40-plus countries as they gather in Hungary this coming April. Many participants will have worked for months in relative isolation due to the pandemic, so the conference will provide a desired return to in-person interaction between Christian publishing peers from around the world. LittWorld is primarily targeted to Christian publishers and writers from difficult countries with little access to local training or encouragement. Many of these participants will need some form of scholarship assistance to attend. The gifts of College Church’s Thanksgiving Eve Offering will provide full conference scholarships and partial travel assistance for scholarship recipients to attend the conference. Each scholarship candidate will complete an application and be
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thoroughly vetted by Media Associates International (MAI) staff. We will give priority to candidates with little access to local or Western funding sources, who have not previously attended a LittWorld, and who demonstrate gifting and commitment to serve the Lord and their nations through Christian publishing or writing. One full conference scholarship, including all meals and lodging for the five-day event, is $850. The cost of travel will vary depending on the candidate's point of departure. “I never imagined God would bless me so abundantly,” said a 2018 scholarship recipient from Bhutan who published two books after the conference. “I never met so many talented men and women of God. I was awed. I was humbled. I was joyous. I was overwhelmed and, yes, I was exceedingly refreshed and rejuvenated.” Christian communicators who attend a LittWorld often refer to themselves as part of the MAI global "family," and stay in touch with MAI and with one another. Our global ministry has grown at the grassroots level as a result of holding LittWorld conferences in the various world regions—formation of MAI regional boards in Europe, Africa and Asia being a prime example. The gifts of this special offering at Thanksgiving will help connect Christians often working in isolated countries with their global family and help give voice to the church as we speak to new opportunities and unchanging gospel truths.
