FOUNDATION
Vol. 31, No. 4: July/August 2024
The WORD at WORK
Project for Lutheran schools & Sunday schools:
Send books about Jesus to
Haiti!
Haiti’s children face a lot of uncertainty.
Over the past decade, the Caribbean island nation of Haiti has suffered four hurricanes, two major earthquakes and two catastrophic floods.
But natural disasters aren’t the only issues affecting Haiti’s children. 58% of Haitians live in poverty, earning $3.65 per day or less. The accumulated burdens of family economic hardship are many, including limited access to necessities like good food and water, adequate housing and medical care. Many Haitian parents struggle to provide for their families, and because of this, about 25% of Haitian children do not live with their birth parents (often living instead on the streets or in orphanages).
Adding to Haiti’s problems, violent gangs have arisen across the country, making it dangerous for children to attend school and for people to attend church. Sometimes families have had to flee the violence in the middle of the night, with only the belongings they can carry in their hands.
Your Lutheran school or Sunday school can share the hope of Jesus.
In the midst of so much uncertainty, Haiti’s children need to hear about Jesus, the Savior who loves them and will never leave them and who gives them the hope of a better life, now and eternally.
Your students can introduce other children to Jesus for only $5 per student!
With your students’ mission offerings, LHF is at work providing books like A Child’s Garden of Bible Stories, Luther’s Small Catechism and devotions in the Haitian Creole and French languages (spoken throughout Haiti).
Best of all, it costs only $5 to provide a beautiful, hardcover Bible storybook or catechism for a family in Haiti. So if your Sunday school raises $100 for “Help 4 Haiti,” they are providing another Sunday school class of 20 students in Haiti with their own Bible books to keep. Your Lutheran day school’s offerings of $500 share God’s Word with 100 families!
Books share God’s love in a lasting way.
When you give a Haitian child a book about Jesus, written in a language they can read and understand, you’re sharing the Good News, even when kids can’t go to school or Sunday school. These books will also be an important resource for American short-term mission teams traveling to Haiti to share the gift of Jesus Christ as they provide medical care, build homes and minister to the hurting Haitian people.
What do you and your students know about
tions and more! Order yours at
Family
of 10 — with one on the way! — makes a big
Rev. Simojoki answers call to serve
Imagine all the issues involved in moving a household of ten — and now imagine moving a family that size more than 6,000 miles, across continents, climates and cultures.
It would be such a daunting task that many families would say “No thanks.” But the Simojoki family is thoroughly undaunted! With the partnership of LHF and The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Rev. Tuomo Simojoki has accepted a call extended by the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland to serve in Kenya for at least 5 years. In answering this call, Rev. Simojoki will continue to manage LHF’s translation projects in East Africa.
“We initially moved to Kenya in 2018 with plans to stay there longer, but the Covid pandemic brought us back to Finland earlier than anticipated,” Rev. Simojoki explained. “When we returned to Finland, we were expecting to return to Kenya soon. Now it seems that, from God’s perspective, this is the right time.”
Tell us about your family.
Our family has been blessed with eight children: Charlotta (18), Selma (17), Esther (15), Märtha (13), Elin (11), Matthias (8), Oscar (6) and Beata (2). Also, we are expecting an addition to our family. God willing, we will welcome a baby boy at the end of October in Nairobi! Charlotta graduated this spring and she will be staying in Finland. Selma and Esther will join us for a year in Kenya before returning back to Finland to finish their school here. The other children will be enrolling at an international Christian school in Nairobi. It’s the same school they attended before, so it is familiar to them.
What motivates a large family to move so far?
We have a clear call for mission work. The work and the environment are natural for me, having been brought up as the son of a Lutheran missionary (the late Rev. Dr. Anssi Simojoki, former LHF project coordinator for African projects). But working and staying in Africa has really gripped the whole family! It is an amazing opportunity to work together with the Africans, supporting the local churches as they grow in numbers, but also grow deeper in their spiritual roots. And it has to be said that we actually really enjoy living in Kenya; it somehow feels like home to us. It takes an adventurous spirit and possibly a pinch of craziness to move to Africa with such a large family, but maybe these are the characteristics that the big families typically have anyway! What’s it like to move to Africa as a large family?
Well, fortunately this is not the first time, so doing it the second time round is a little bit easier, but admittedly it is quite an operation! You have your work permits, dependent passes, school admissions in Finland and Kenya, housing issues, packing, insurances, contracts, vaccinations, farewells, etc. We have said many times that it would be great to bypass this phase of moving and
Beata packing herself
Baby Simojoki, due in October
The Simojoki crew at the airport
serve in Africa
just already be in Kenya. But there is wisdom in things happening in steps. It allows us to prepare psychologically for the new phase. It also gives us a healthy mourning period for all the good things we need to leave behind here in Finland.
What will you be missing from Finland as you leave?
The biggest thing is our eldest daughter Charlotta, who will be staying behind. And soon we will be missing the next two, Selma and Esther, as they leave in a year. It is a big enough step for a child to leave home, but it is even a bigger one when the parents are over 6,000 miles away. We will also leave behind other relatives and friends. The children will leave behind their friends, hobbies and schools. For the kids, this move also means giving up their freedom of movement. In Finland, it is safe for them to walk and cycle independently wherever they want. In Kenya, this freedom is lost, and we parents need to take them everywhere. We will also miss small practical things like being able to drink the tap water, electricity without power cuts, clean vegetables, etc. And ironically, as we move to assist others in getting spiritual materials in their own mother tongues, we ourselves forfeit that right as we leave our Finnish congregation behind. Our youngest kids also say they will miss the snow, but for us parents that is no problem at all!
What are you looking forward to in Kenya?
We are really excited to get back to working every day together with our Nairobi staff. We have very close relations with them and have missed them dearly. We are also looking forward to the communal way of life that is so typical in Africa. From a work perspective, we are looking forward to advancing some projects that have been waiting for us to be there in person. On behalf of the kids, we parents are happy they will be returning to a Christian school. We are looking forward to them having an hour of Bible every day and just having a school where the Word of God is present in every topic and in the whole operation of the school.
How can we pray for the Simojoki family?
■ The move to Kenya is a large operation that really takes a lot of energy. We ask for strength and perseverance during this move.
■ For the children, we ask that God would prepare good friends, teachers and hobbies in Kenya. For the children staying in Finland, for them to have a sense of security and to find their own place in the world.
■ Giving birth in Kenya is a new and slightly worrying experience. We ask that everything would go well and that we would get a healthy baby and that Leena would stay safe as well.
■ Experience has shown that spiritual work invites the devil to really attack hard. So we ask for protection in dangers, perseverance in times of trials and for peace in Jesus Christ.
Immigrant pastor introduces other immigrants to Jesus
Chaplain Eddie Mekasha, who immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia 22 years ago, loves books and telling stories. “And my best story is the story of Jesus,” he says with a smile.
In 2007, Rev. Mekasha graduated from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, and ever since, he has looked for opportunities to share the Good News with the people around him. No one is a stranger for long, and Rev. Mekasha is quick to share the Good News, especially with people who (like him) don’t speak English as a first language.
“For me, America is like heaven in Revelation 7:9, with all its diversity,” he explained. “At the end of days, we will be in heaven with all people and all languages.”
In addition to working from St. Mark Lutheran Church in Omaha, Rev. Mekasha also works as a foster care supervisor with the Department of Human Services (DHS). Many of his clients come from homes where English is not their heart language.
“I feel a great burden for these children,” said Rev. Mekasha. “There are a lot of families who have children before knowing how to raise children. And so I am a kind of father.”
In his role, Rev. Mekasha often sees opportunities to share LHF’s children’s Bible books in languages like Spanish, Burmese and Swahili.
“Every situation is a good opportunity for us to proclaim the Gospel,” Rev. Mekasha reflected. “Every situation brings people to Jesus Christ.”
Due to DHS regulations, Rev. Mekasha is always very careful to seek out foster parents’ permission before giving LHF’s Bible books to the children. “It’s very painful for these kids to be away from their biological parents,” Rev. Mekasha concluded. “But I can point them to the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
Learn more about LHF’s work at www.
Church closing seeds New Life in Indonesia
For over 80 years, believers entered the doors of Bethlehem Lutheran Church to worship, baptize their babies, get married, and be buried in Christ. But in 2022, their congregation had to make a heartbreaking decision, and in April 2023, those doors closed and locked behind them forever as they dissolved their church.
“It was very much a grief process,” shared Bethlehem’s final congregation president Don Kuhlmann. “I knew in my heart after all the discussions [as a congregation], all the prayers, that it was the right thing, but it didn’t make it easy.”
items were donated to churches who needed them. “At first, it felt sad to let these things go, but that sadness turned to joy to see how much the churches
For months, the members of Bethlehem had come together to discuss their shrinking membership and lack of a pastor. “One of our leaders, Dielda Kuhlmann, finally said, ‘Maybe that’s God’s message. Maybe God’s message is that we need to close.’ And I’m not sure that closure was the first thing we got from that either. It kind of evolved slowly and painfully,” shared Joel Jackmann, Bethlehem’s vice president.
Then began the long process of sorting through 80 years of paperwork, memories, and most importantly, their belongings! Items like pews, hymnals, the organ, and even the church’s sign out at the road needed to be sold or find new homes.
The building was sold to a thriving Moldovan congregation, while other
concern was, it’s Lutheran,” continued Teresa. “We stay Lutheran, Missouri Synod, and we go from there.”
“Somebody from LHF talked to our circuit of pastors,” explained Dielda, “and then we started researching, what does LHF do? So we looked into it, and that you’re translating all the books but not the Bible, that was perfect! We had worked with Lutheran Bible Translators, and we thought, these guys do all the other books that are good to read, too!”
and charities valued and appreciated these gifts from Bethlehem,” shared Joel. Don continued, “Over and over and over, the things we had were just what someone else needed at the moment!”
Having sold everything that wasn’t being gifted away, the congregation now had to write a will, stating how the money from those sales should be used. “You’ve got this money, and what do you do with it? And that’s when we met our group and sat down and figured out, with lots of prayer, where our money should go,” explained Teresa Feltmann, a member of Bethlehem’s legacy team.
That’s when the congregation decided to send some of their funds to the Lutheran Heritage Foundation. “Our first
With the $82,000 gift from Bethlehem, LHF has so far printed 6,000 copies of A Child’s Garden of Bible Stories into the Batak language for Muslim Indonesia, with plans for many more translations to come.
“We wanted a legacy. That word was very important to us. Something to be remembered by,” said Dielda.
Teresa agreed, “It’s sharing our faith. It’s sharing God’s Word. I mean, we know the money that we got [from the sales] is God’s money, and when you can pass it on, you can enrich someone’s life. A young person will grow up with the love of Christ, and that’s important.”
“While Bethlehem no longer has a brick and mortar church or a gathering congregation, the faith taught there lives on in the hearts of 6,000 new believers in Indonesia,” said Rev. Dr. Matthew Heise, LHF executive director.
(Left) Crucifer Logan Browning leads the recessional at the closing service of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Renton, Wash. (Right) An Indonesian child eagerly begins reading his new Bible storybook.
