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Editor’s note: This is a missions story first published by the North American Mission Board.
“You really should hear them sing.”
That’s one of the first things David Gaskins tells people when they ask about Mosaic Church in Provo, Utah, where he and his wife, Sara, serve as church planting missionaries. “Every Sunday, it brings me to tears,” David says. “The voices are just thunder in that room because so many of our people have lost everything for Jesus.”
According to David, Provo, home to Brigham Young University, is the “heartbeat and hub” of the worldwide Mormon church. “Planting a church here is obviously a tall order,” says David. “But we love Mormons and want them to believe in the real Jesus. That’s why we came.”
Four years after its launch, Mosaic is now a loud-singing congregation made up largely of young, onetime Mormons who are paying a price for their response to the gospel. ‘When somebody here leaves the Mormon church, it’s a really big deal,” says David. “They lose their job. They get shunned by their family. This church is all they have, and that’s why they sing loudly. They’ve found the real Jesus, and they’re never going back.”
David and Sara Gaskins are just one of the more than 3,000 missionary families serving across the United States and Canada benefitting from the North American Mission Board’s (NAMB) Annie Armstrong Easter Offering. One hundred percent of gifts given to the offering go to the field to support missionaries.
Gifts are used to train and resource missionaries in church planting and compassion ministries and create evangelism resources. On its website, NAMB says, “New churches are being planted, hurts are being healed and lives are being transformed by the gospel because you give.”
The offering was started in 1895 by Woman’s Missionary Union to benefit the work of the Home Mission Board, now North American Mission Board. In 1934, it was named in honor of Annie Armstrong, a bold missions advocate and WMU’s first national executive leader.
Today, more than $2 billion has been donated by Southern Baptist churches and individuals to support thousands of missionaries in church planting and compassion ministries.
The annual Week of Prayer for North American Missions and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering is the first Sunday in March through the second Sunday — March 2–9.
The Week of Prayer for North American missions is observed annually by SBC churches to pray for missionaries, their ministries and their families. Churches can choose this date or another time during the Easter season to participate.
For more information and resources on the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, visit anniearmstrong.com.