Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run - run faster than the fastest lion, or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death and die, so it doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle - when the sun comes up you had better be running.

Wow what a year we have had! You have been apart of so much this year in missions and we are so excited to see how God is going to use us across the globe in the years to come. You sent 221 short term missionaries to the field this year. These missionaries went on ten different trips to eight different countries.

Mozambique
Swaziland
Honduras
Uganda
Brazil
Mexico
Papua New Guinea
India

You have had an amazing impact across the globe.

• 1,610 plus pastors & leaders were taught
• 62,740 plus had the Gospel shared with them
• 5,400 plus were feed by missions teams alone
• 9 construction projects were complete
• You continued to support two overseas campuses

You sent three Missionaries over seas

1. Andy Ardoin (India)
2. Heather Stewart (Honduras)
3. Deborah Williams (Mozambique)

You hosted nine teams in 2009 at our Baton Rouge Dream Center. These teams did a variety of outreaches and activities. Here is the impact that these teams made:

1. Passed out 2200 bottles of water
2. 1100 bottles of water and Capri suns
3. 500 people were reached at 2 block parties
4. 50 kids came to a free basketball clinic
5. Gave out 650 bags of groceries
6. Cooked over 200 meals for 2 big apartment complexes
7. Washed 70 cars
8. Helped feed and clothe 300 homeless men
9. Helped clothe 115 people in the Baton Rouge Dream Center boutique
10. Gave away 550 snow cones in the inner city of Baton Rouge
11. Mowed 12 yards
12. Cooked and served food for 7 hours at Rock the River
13. Cleaned, re-arranged, and organized Thrift Store at the Baton Rouge Dream Center
14. Gave away 150 granola bars
15. 3 offices painted at Donaldsonville Dream Center
16. Painted Rec. Room at Donaldsonville Dream Center
17. Downstairs painted at the Baton Rouge Dream Center
18. Fed lunch and gave out sodas and candy to 40 handi-cap citizens
19. Provided food and served at the funeral for a victim’s family at the Baton Rouge Dream Center
20. Cleaned, re-arranged, and organized Thrift Store at Donaldsonville Dream Center
21. Cleaned 4 apartments of single moms at the Church United Dream Homes
22. Cleaned the yard & fixed the car of widow at the Baton Rouge Dream Center
23. Reached out to 100 prostitutes and dancers around Baton Rouge
24. Fed 100 homeless youth
25. Gave chocolate out to 200 elderly at an apartment complex
26. Led service and reached out to 50 elderly at a nursing home
27. Gave out 75 jars of pickles to the families of Red Stick trailer park
28. Ministered to 50 people at Spanish Campus through dramas & testimonies
29. Assisted women’s team at Pamper Night by trash pick up & doing manicures & pedicures
30. Reached over 200 people through Adopt-A-Block outreaches
31. Remodeled the Donaldsonville Youth Room
32. Youth Service Outreach to 100 Youth at the Baton Rouge Dream Center
33. Helped tear down VBS at the Highland Campus

Pastors Dino and Delynn Rizzo are extremely excited about the impact you as a church have made in the Kingdom of Heaven. Lives were changed, souls were reached, the hungry and homeless were fed, widows and orphans were cared for and you did it all for an audience of One. God is changing lives and He is using you to do it. You were born for such a time as this!

“Beautiful Africa, I love your people. What a dark, cruel place you are, but what light gleams on your horizon; a gleam that is more powerful than any other force that lingers in your shadows, the gleam of hope.”
I want to remember Africa as it really is. I want to remember how dry it is—dry enough to dehydrate body. Dry enough to split lips and crack skin. I want to remember the coolness of the winter and the redness of the sand that attaches to any and every form around it. I want to remember the beauty of the people—the raw, unpainted beauty. I want to remember their overwhelming love, the touch of the children—their wide eyes and their big smiles of straight, white, white teeth.
One little girl captured my attention. She was hard not to notice as she had attached herself to my side. She took my scarf off and wrapped it around her little body. When it was time to leave I reached down to hug her and she pulled away from me, grinning ear to ear. She knew I would take my scarf back and was ready for a chase! I couldn’t take it back, I didn’t want it back. As we drove away, I thought about how I may never see that little girl again, but she will have that scarf for as long as it lasts. I will have the memory of her smile and the blue tie-dyed scarf wrapped around her.
There were so many sweet moments on this trip, more moments than I can write down; moments I hope to never forget. I went to Africa expecting to give love but found myself overwhelmed by love. I expected to reach someone, anyone, but I was the one reached out to. I expected to hold the forgotten, but instead they held me. Father God reminded me that not only does he remember the ones I was privileged to hold, but that he had not forgotten me or the dreams and desires of my heart.
If there’s any one thing I learned on this trip, it was a deeper understanding of the character of God. He is doing something wonderful in the hearts of the people who look to him, all around the world. He’s bigger than I thought. His purpose is so much bigger than I thought. It’s bigger than me, it’s bigger than America, It’s bigger than Africa, and who knows what difference my story may make. Maybe it will make all the difference in the world…
April Altizan

Where do I even begin? What piece of Africa do I share out of so many moments? What can I possibly say in just a few lines about the continent that has left me both broken and filled?

Do I start with the children, the brown eyes and shy smiles, the tender touches that quickly turned to fierce squeezes at the slightest sign of being settled back to the ground? Should I mention Africa’s babies, crying out for so much more than food? I know that my arms could have held so many more, for so much longer. I know that I still had some kisses to give and some hugs to spare. I ask myself if I’ll ever feel okay about walking away. If I’ll ever forgive myself for shutting the door and driving back down the road; forgive myself for climbing back on the plane?

The first day we spent at the church in Mozambique, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to shake. Lunchtime had arrived and we were all so eager to “get our hands dirty”, to jump in and help serve. One by one they lined up, and one by one we carried hot bowls of beans and rice to them; and still they came and they kept coming. The line seemed never-ending even when we all saw the pots thinning out, when we saw the cooks hit bottom. I kept praying “Fishes and Loaves” even as they told me that there was no more. I didn’t understand. How could there be no more? I’m praying here God!! How could there be no more? Watching them as they were watching us to see if we had just one more bowl, I can’t say I felt anything but broken. I was so profoundly broken. As a mother, I felt like I failed; and, maybe, that’s how God had to speak to me. He had to remind me that every day they, or someone just like them, are told no more and it’s that ONE MORE that we absolutely cannot fail. It’s that ONE MORE that we have to keep fighting to feed. It’s that ONE MORE that we keep seeking because these children are God’s most precious treasures and they should never be hungry emotionally, physically or spiritually.

I still struggle with how to talk about La’Salette. It’s not something I’ve shared because I fear losing what I felt. How in just a few words I loved her as if I always had. How, when walking through her garden, I felt like I was walking on anointed ground and how I could have stayed still in God’s presence because it just felt so abundant there. How her embrace took my breath away and how eager I am to feel my Father’s arms around me, knowing how much better it will be. How I long to return to just sit and be with my Savior in a garden that I truly felt was as close as I’ve ever been to what God had planned for us in the beginning.

Charnell and Loupe

Juarez marked our first official short term mission trip. Secretly, I was hoping that the trip would be canceled due to my own fears, but God knows best. Not only did He raise all the funds, but He also eliminated every obstacle we faced in going on the trip. The real danger would have been disobedience. When we arrived at Emmanuel Ministries (the orphanage in Juarez) I was completely humbled by the greeting we received. The children were so excited to see us. It gave me a new appreciation for the blessings that I take for granted and a sense of responsibility for what God has given Matt and I. “Where much is given, much is required.” During one of our VBS sessions for the kids, I was able to snap a picture of Charnell (a Donaldsonville Dream Center teen) hugging Loupe (a lively young girl who lives at the orphanage with her brother). That image will remain with me always. We are so thankful to HPC and Servolution Global for giving us this opportunity to be a part of what God is doing at HPC El Paso and in Juarez!

Hannah Bourgeois