Dear Friends and Partners of FAME,

As we begin another month full of uncertainty and change, let me first tell you what will not change, our gratitude for you and your support through prayer. This has been a season of struggle for almost all around the world. Whether it be through sickness, hunger, finances, loneliness, or just unrest, we have all been touched by this pandemic in some way. Your prayers have made a difference in lives around the world.

And though we may not see the constant news reports as we did a few months back, the virus is still prevalent among us and is now reaching developing countries around the world in force. Charles Franzén, of World Relief recently stated, “The health care systems in these countries are completely unprepared and incapable of mounting a reasonable clinical response of anything comparable to the U.S. response,” said , “There will continue to be significant health challenges especially around the capacity of health clinics, and we anticipate an acute challenge around food security and food supplies as well.

Mission partner, E.K. Durairaj in India said, “In the meantime, it’s mostly the people who depend on daily wage jobs, agriculture and labor’s for livelihood are the most affected economically. They struggle to make ends meet. The poor, old aged and children are struggling for their daily bread.” And that is not the only mission partner who we have heard state that hunger has become an issue. Many people in developing countries live day to day, depending on that day’s wages for that day’s food. As countries have “locked down”, thousands of people have not been able to work, leaving many to go without food for days on end.

This month, we ask that you continue to partner with us, as we pray for so many of our mission partners around the world, who for some are now just starting to see Covid at their front door. In Honduras, the situation has become critical. Felipe Colby of His Eyes just recently stated, The clinic is supposed to be closed in 13 minutes, this is currently the parking lot (it’s full). Pray for us…things are getting worse, and at an alarming rate. More will be going hungry with the further tightening of restrictions, and more are getting sick clearly (from COVID-19 and from a lot of other things) and there are fewer safe options for medical help. We need more money to distribute more food, and we are going to need to invest more in the clinic just to try to keep up with the need, and to do our best to keep our staff safe as best we can while meeting this ongoing challenge.

Because of so many of FAME’s faithful supporters, FAME will be sending a container of medical supplies to help meet those needs in Honduras later this month. We are also sending a container of medical supplies to Haiti. Now more than ever, these supplies that will be sent will SAVE LIVES. And for those that will be treated, they will be treated in the name of Jesus.

So again, THANK YOU for your prayers. Many of our mission partners around the world are going through struggles that they have never seen. Please pray for strength and guidance as they go through this season and pray that the people that will be treated by our mission partners will see the love of Jesus in the care they are provided.

Blessings in the coming month.

Click here for the July Prayer Calendar

Not a News Flash:  Other Diseases haven’t taken a vacation during the COVID-19 global pandemic- No surprise to you I’m sure; your FAME global partners are READY for IMPACT!  (Read on to see how YOU can participate!)

Although there have been many reports from your global partners reporting that people were avoiding hospitals and clinics…their additional diseases and conditions haven’t stopped!

Tuberculosis, cholera, malaria, and measles are infectious diseases still ravaging developing countries.  Many organizations (UN, WHO, and others) have targeted them as the top 4 diseases to eradicate by 2030!  Heart disease, diabetes, injuries, and infections all need treatment!  Those diseases and others have not slowed down or taken a vacation.

In the last week, one partner in Honduras reported 3 Dengue Fever cases in teens they transported in the Ambulance funded by

you!  Another partner close to FAME in Mexico reported 4 deaths and many hospitalizations from Dengue Fever (mosquito-borne illness) in their area of influence.  In Pakistan, one hospital admitted 2000 dengue patients in one week recently!

So far in 2020 over 1 million cases and 580 deaths have occurred from Dengue Fever in the Americas.  Simple solutions with treatment BUT that is when access to healthcare is available!  In Ghana, your partner building a pediatric cardiac center is in dire need of the heart care facility!  Access to Healthcare opens the door for the gospel!

While the USA is waiting for lockdowns to end and life to return to something like normal, COVID-19 AND other diseases are ravaging your partners!  Can you strengthen FAME’s position to always be READY FOR IMPACT for your FAME global partners?

Just like the diseases have never stopped, FAME’s daily operations have never stopped sending help and hope on your behalf to the world’s most vulnerable.

Can you give $100 right now to keep FAME READY FOR IMPACT as we receive daily pleas for assistance around the world?

Your $100 will impact 100 people!

YOU have sent help and hope to Partners in 32 countries this year!  Your partnership will keep them READY FOR IMPACT.

Grateful for you,

Bill Warren
Executive Director

 

Because of you nearly $50,000 in Emergency Funds and over $400K in Equipment and Supplies have been distributed during this crisis!

As the Coronavirus is expected to linger (some describe it as smolder) in Developing Countries, FAME and you are positioned to prepare our global partners with clinic upgrades, new clinics, ambulances, supplies, and even a pediatric cardiac center. Many of your FAME Global Partners are feeding starving families impacted by national lockdowns, so the need for our projects with them has intensified, and many of them have fewer funds available because of the crisis. In these times, our partnership is life-saving for the gospel and medical ministry!

FAME is prepared to move forward on 13 Sustainable Projects so that 2020 can end and 2021 can begin with solutions to the lack of access to healthcare for the world’s most vulnerable.

Here’s a report from one of your African partners. You made it possible to ship Oxygen Equipment to them in April- preparing for this crisis. Here is an excerpt:

“Also, the first COVID pneumonia patient
needing in-hospital oxygen showed up today. He is in isolation, so we are now officially open for business. Please join in praying that we will be able to help the people who will start showing up here.

This patient is a 6-year-old child with pneumonia who also tested positive for COVID – it could be that he has normal bacterial pneumonia on top of being infected with COVID, as I at least was not expecting
small children to have significant illnesses due to COVID alone.”

We wouldn’t be able to be preparing to send such Help and Hope without your partnership!

Click here for a video about how You can help!

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings, who say to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”        Isaiah 52:7 (NIV)

In recent months, much recognition and praise have been stated about the wonderful and beautiful people who serve in our healthcare system. We see yard signs and banners in front of hospitals, long-term care facilities and homes, expressing gratitude to these individuals who face the fears of the current health care crisis every day. How wonderful it is to be surrounded by countless skilled and trained individuals who have extensive facilities and resources to help us stay well and care for us when we are ill. Yet, at FAME, we know this is not a reality for everyone around the world. No, hundreds of millions do not have access to healthcare.

Over FAME’s 50-year history, we have had the honor to partner with countless beautiful servants who practice medical service among the “ends of the earth” people. Heroes who are dedicated to offering medical care where it previously was not offered. And in doing so, proclaiming peace, good tidings, and good news. Your partnership with FAME has allowed us to ship many pallets of care items to forty servants with beautiful feet in Ukraine. These servants care for 2,000 elder orphans, providing wound care, hygiene care, prayer, and gospel teaching. The living conditions these elders experience in Ukraine creates a high-risk environment, yet they are heroes who persist in offering help and hope to these vulnerable individuals every week. Your partnership with FAME has allowed us to provide five pallets worth of needed care items since March 1st.

This is just one example of where your partnership is helping us equip those beautiful servants. Since March, FAME has not only helped servants in Ukraine but also Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Columbia, Honduras, Japan, India, and Mozambique. In all those places around our world, Kingdom servants are leveraging those resources to help people see that Our God reigns!

Thank you for partnering with us at FAME.

Barry Reed
FAME Director of Mission Resources

 

Your FAME Global partners are disrupting the lack of access to healthcare with sustainable models that lead to evangelism!

Scarcity of access to healthcare is one spoke of the wheel of inequality and injustice on the global landscape.  At a time when Americans have a raised awareness of inequality and injustice among a portion of our population, your FAME global partners have been addressing this issue for 50 years.

It is only one “spoke of a complicated wheel,” but 400 Million people have NO ACCESS to healthcare because of inequities that your partnership with FAME is actively addressing.  By partnering with FAME, you are sending help and hope to the world’s most vulnerable.

In Ghana, a pediatric cardiac care center will be the only such facility in a vast region of that country.

In Spain, a doctor is serving North African Refugees who have escaped brutality and persecution in their home countries.

In Brazil, a Medical boat on the Amazon, is the only healthcare for hundreds of villages- and then only a time or two each year.

Your FAME Global partners are disrupting the lack of access to healthcare with sustainable models that open doors to evangelism, help and hope.

Thank you for your partnership, you ARE doing something about inequality and injustice on the global stage.

Dear Friends and Partners of FAME,

Thank you for your continued partnership with the ministry of FAME through prayer. In these turbulent times, your prayers are making a difference and changing lives of those around the world.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10, Jesus reminds us of the importance of helping others, no matter what race, religion or nationality. Through acts of kindness and empathy, people’s lives can be changed. Though you may not be physically helping someone at this time, you are changing lives daily through your prayers for the world’s most vulnerable, our mission partners, scholarship students, volunteers, staff, and board members.

This month please partner with us as we pray for many of our mission partners to whom we have provided medical supplies, are preparing to send supplies, or to whom we are providing funding, through your generous donations, for a sustainable healthcare project.  Pray that lives will be changed both physically and spiritually as our mission partners around the world share the love of Christ through the medical care that they provide.

We also ask that you pray for our scholarship students hat are studying to become medical professionals in their home countries. This has been a very challenging time for all students around the world. Many have had to finish the school year remotely by taking online classes. Please pray that these talented Christian young people continue to do well as they pursue their degrees.

And lastly, please pray for many of our FAME volunteers that give of their time and talents to support the ministry. Though we have not seen a lot of them over the last few months due to Covid-19 and social distancing, we pray that we will see them again soon, and we pray a blessing over them as they continue to serve God through their service.

Click here for the June Prayer Calendar

This Memorial Day Weekend in Indianapolis is going to be very different!  No Indy 500 Race.  No giant multi-family picnic we’ve been attending on and off for 20 years.

But one thing won’t change- honoring those who have gone before us.  That’s my mom, Marilyn Coon above. Last year we lost my dad a few months after his 90th birthday.  Memorial Day brings up memories of his love for his family, his love of the Lord, love of his country (WWII vet), and his love for global missions!

At FAME, remembering our past brings up memories of Bob Reeves, the foundational Executive Director of FAME.  I first met Bob when he spoke at a Faith Promise Rally at my childhood home church.  His passion for Global Missions radiated from him and Rosella as he challenged our church to change the world!

Maybe there’s someone special you’d like to honor this Memorial Day!  There are many great organizations to whom you could give, I understand that.  But here’s why I’d like to ask if you could consider a $100 Memorial Gift to FAME? FAME has been impacting nearly a million of the world’s most vulnerable (hearing the gospel and being treated in the name of Jesus) every year for 50 years.  When you give a $100 memorial gift to FAME it will have an eternal impact on 100 people.  People who have been made vulnerable by persecution, pandemic, injustice, poverty, and trafficking.  Your global FAME partners are on the frontlines of the gospel in over 40 countries- I think that is a cause worth giving an honoring memorial gift to!

Tell us who you’d like the memorial gift to honor AND add a story in a note (online or in the mail) – we’d love to share your joy remembering a life well-lived.  Click here to make your Memorial gift.

Blessings and Happy Memorial Day!

Jeff Coon
Director of Development.

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.S.  If you have another 2 minutes can I tell you about the last picture in this email?  This is Dorothy Bare and I last year in  Joplin, MO.  Dorothy and her husband Dr. Garland Bare were Medical Missionaries to Thailand beginning in the 1950s, before FAME was even a dream.  When I met her last year she said, “Garland and I said many times, If only FAME had existed when we were just getting started in Thailand.  God provided the medical equipment and supplies we needed in miraculous ways – but he and I were so thankful FAME exists for medical evangelism now!”  Garland passed away in April of 2017, what a legacy they have in the world of Medical Evangelism.

 

 

It’s time for you to know that in an ongoing survey of your global partners, great discoveries are being made.  According to the results, at least 1 person hears the gospel and is treated for every $1 given to FAME.  So when you give to FAME it’s not just a dollar amount, but also an impact amount of the number of people you touched!  Here are some highlights of your impact recently:

• Nepal – soap, sanitizers, and masks being distributed by a Katmandu orphanage
• Mozambique – oxygen equipment, and a ventilator
• Myanmar – fabric for an orphanage to sew 10,000 masks for distribution
• Honduras – masks and gloves for clinic workers
• Zimbabwe – PPE supplies for Hospital
• Haiti – various medical supplies for Hospitals and Clinics

Plus supplies were sent to missions/hospitals in:

Cambodia * Cameroon * Chad * China *  Colombia * Costa Rica * Cuba * DR of Congo  Dominican Republic * Ecuador * Ghana  Guatemala * Guinea * India * Japan * Jordan * Kenya * Liberia * Malawi * Mexico * Nicaragua * Niger * Nigeria * Panama * Philippines * Togo  Ukraine * USA

That’s YOUR global impact list!

During this crisis, you’ve made a difference in the lives of so many of the world’s most vulnerable!  More than 1 for every $1 you’ve given – and they all have a name, and they all are grateful for your generosity and partnership with FAME!

It has been so encouraging to see the outpouring of support for so many of the previously unsung heroes of the world.  My son is a Paramedic and daily confronts this pandemic crisis in Indianapolis.  Jeff, my co-worker, has a daughter-in-law that is an ICU Nurse, seeing the reality of this crisis first-hand every shift. Both are Heroes during this crisis!

Globally we are seeing your FAME partner doctors, not only treating patients but doing so much for their communities, even delivering food!  In Honduras, the lockdown is so significant that only a Doctor can get past the road-blocks.  So a FAME Impact Scholarship Recipient Doctor is delivering food to mountain villages in the 4×4 Ambulance (which you helped provide) before he begins his day at the clinic!  A Hero during this crisis!

But according to Paul, “How can they believe without hearing about Jesus?  How can they hear about Jesus without a person speaking to them?  And how can they speak about Jesus without being sent?”  That’s YOU, the one who sent!

You are a Hero during this Global Crisis, and many of you for years before now, and years to come!  I wish I could deliver an “A Hero Lives Here” sign to you because of your partnership with FAME!

The Heroes on the front-line of Medical Evangelism are able to do what they do, because of HEROES LIKE YOU!

Thank you for your partnership!

Blessings,

Bill Warren
Executive Director

Dear Friends and Partners of FAME,

Thank you for your unswerving partnership with the ministry of FAME through prayer. People all around the world are being blessed and strengthened because of you.

In Exodus 17, we see something amazing happen in the life of Moses and the Israelites. As the Israelites are wandering in the desert, they meet opposition from the Amalekites and soon Moses sends Joshua to lead troops into battle.  Moses, along with Aaron and Hur, watched the battle from a hill nearby and as Exodus 17:11 reads, “As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.” The statement, “held up his hands” refers to a position of prayer, and when Moses prayed, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he stopped praying, the Israelites were losing. This verse shows the importance of prayer, because the victory of the battle was dependent on Moses praying. And when Moses became weary, in order to assure victory over their foe, Aaron and Hur were there to support Moses until the victory was won.

Around the world, and especially those on the “front lines”, many are most likely getting weary. And now more possibly than ever they need your help and your prayers to defeat this persistent foe by helping them “hold up their hands”. For the month of May, the focus of the prayer calendar will be those partners and organizations that FAME has helped in some way in the last few months by either sending medical supplies or sending funding to purchase supplies in order to defeat this unseen, but present enemy. And as you may be surprised to see, many of the organizations listed are in the United States. Though not the “norm” for us to do, we have found it a blessing to come alongside those in the US as well, as we unite to help those in need,

 

We also would like to request prayer for the FAME board members who give of their time and talents to lead the ministry. We ask for your prayers that the FAME Board be given wisdom and discernment during this unprecedented time.

The Amalekites were unexpected and seemed as persistent as the COVID-19 virus that is among us, however, through prayer and the support of others, the enemy was defeated. May our partners be strengthened, and may this current enemy be defeated around the world through the help of your prayers.

Many blessings to you and thank you once again for coming alongside us as we pray for our brothers and sisters around the world.

Click here for the May Prayer Calendar