Mustard

Planting the seeds of God’s Kingdom through business.

sowing the seeds of change.

Mary’s strength Mary* is very poor and lives in a region, hostile to Christianity. She was 15 when her parents arranged her marriage to a man who was 50.

Mary’s husband has since been conscripted to the army and lives away from home for all but five days of the year. She receives £15 per month from him to look after herself and their six children.

Mary joined a Self-Help Group, with 15 other local women, and began to deposit a few pence each week into their group savings pot.

Eventually she could borrow £11 from the group to open a small shop and the profits from the shop now pay for her children to go to school.

Mary is very happy because she doesn’t want her children to be married young and suffer like she did. When giving birth to her last child, Mary had no-one to care for her and no food for the family, but the members of her Self-Help Group visited her every day and helped feed her children for a whole month.

h ow

The three principles of OM’s Self Help approach are radical in many of the places we serve.

Every woman is created in the image of God, every woman has gifts and abilities, and that united, women are very strong.

*Names and identities changed to protect individuals living in areas of persecution.

you can help us.

With your support many ‘mustard seeds’ can be planted as OM teams share God’s Word, impart vocational skills, form Self-Help Groups and empower the start-up of small businesses through micro-loans. By God’s grace, these seeds will grow and bring life to many.

Lovely’s honour Like many young women in the poorest areas of Bangladesh, Lovely* was married at a very young age and lived with her in-laws. She was pregnant at just 13, but a terribly traumatic birth left her baby dead and Lovely with life-changing injuries.

Discarded by her new family, her parents took her back, but her father soon died, leaving her dependent on her brother and suffering the taunts of a resentful sister-in-law as she tried to live with her disability.

“I could not control my bodily functions and had to continually change my clothes. I was a shame to my family,” she reports.

In her 30s, Lovely was introduced to a Christian charity hospital where she received a life-transforming operation. Soon after, she was enrolled on an OM tailoring training programme. Today, Lovely has joy in her life.

She wears a colostomy bag, which she can keep

Your gift may be used for any one of our life-changing programmes. Every gift is appreciated, but our work is more effective when we receive regular monthly donations so we can better plan ahead and help the most people, in the best way.

clean, and now has freedom to move about and eat and drink normally. “Life is no longer messy and shameful,” she says.

Lovely now uses her skills to support herself.

OM’s tailoring programmes specifically target the many hundreds of women who suffer fistulas and life-altering injuries caused by early childbirth. Emotional support, alongside practical training, means life-long change.

OM’s Training and Discipleship programmes provide a safe and nurturing environment for vulnerable women to develop skills, regain confidence and grow in faith.

£8 a month,

£15 a month,

or a one-off gift of £100 could help buy equipment to run a business.

or a one-off gift of £200, could enable a woman in Africa to be supported

Salim’s hope

Salim* lives in a rural area of Pakistan, where poverty is endemic. Finance is a key problem when you’re caught in the poverty trap, with no bank account or regular income. Running a business often means taking out loans at impossibly high rates, just to provide for the family. As a minority group in a Muslim country, Christians particularly struggle.

Salim earns a pitiful wage as a labourer and he dreams of setting up a rickshaw bus service that will support his children and parents who also depend upon him.

OM’s Micro Enterprise ministries are helping people start their own business with loans from as little as £8.00.

and empowered by a Self-Help Group.

Through Mustard, local enterprises in many of the world’s impoverished areas offer training and low-rate loans to get such initiatives up and running. In Pakistan, our partner, Unique Star, has helped establish rickshaw drivers, barbers, cafés, home appliance shops, grocery stores, printing shops, garment stalls, agricultural endeavours and many other operations that provide sustainable income. As well as solid business training and loan facilitation our partners offer the opportunity to come together in Christian fellowship and support.

£40 a month,

£80 a month,

or a one-off gift of £500, could provide a four-month tailoring skills programme for a vulnerable woman.

or a one-off gift of £1,000, could provide micro-loans and business training to small enterprises, helping people break free from poverty forever.

t r o p su p why

Mustard?

OM ministries, around the world, are sowing seeds of finance, vocational skill and God’s Word, in the lives of the lost, the poor and the broken.

By God’s grace and power, these seeds are growing into oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendour (Isaiah 61:3 - NIV) Please partner with us!

HOW YOUR GIFT COULD BE USED: Setting up Self-Help Groups (community savings and loan groups) Vocational Skills Training (tailoring, carpentry, electrical, IT) Micro-Enterprise start-up, through training and loans

“What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

Mark 4:30-32 (NIV)

Find out more at www.uk.om.org/mustard

Operation Mobilisation The Quinta, Weston Rhyn, Oswestry, Shropshire, SY10 7LT. t: 01691 773388 e: info.uk@om.org w: www.uk.om.org

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