Articles for tag: Rapha House

October 16, 2020

Christian Standard

Church Preserves City’s Apple Butter Makin’ Tradition

By Jim Nieman The annual Apple Butter Makin’ Days festival in Mount Vernon, Mo., was canceled—yet another casualty of COVID-19—but then Mount Vernon Christian Church stepped up. The church participates in the festival each year. In fact, MVCC is one of three organizations that actually makes apple butter on-site during the three-day event at the Lawrence County Courthouse square located downtown. “Our recipe is the best,” MVCC lead pastor Jeff Kruger confided. (It’s the old Stotts City Union Church apple butter recipe that has been passed down through family members.) So, upon learning the three-day event was canceled, MVCC—a church

January 9, 2019

Christian Standard

Rapha House’s Freed Graces Magazine Cover (Plus News Briefs)

Compiled by Chris Moon and Jim Nieman   Stephanie Freed, an Ozark Christian College alum who cofounded Rapha House, was named a “2019 Pathfinder” by J Mag, a lifestyles magazine published by the Joplin Globe. According to the Globe: “The award honors individuals, couples or groups who have accomplished something unique and who have made it possible for others to follow in their footsteps.” The entry for Freed reads: “Stephanie Freed . . . co-founded Rapha House International in 2003, after her father challenged her to research human trafficking. Today, there are safe havens in Cambodia, Thailand and in Haiti, where

November 26, 2018

Christian Standard

10 Christmas Gift Ideas that Support Ministry and Mission

By Carla Williams You want your Christmas season to be as meaningful and Christ-focused as possible, but when it comes to gifts, it can be difficult to escape the trap of overcrowded malls or flash Internet sales. As you ponder your list of loved ones to shop for this Christmas, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to give something that makes a difference for the kingdom around the world? Many ministries and mission groups sell thoughtful, meaningful gifts that help sustain and serve their gospel purposes. This year, you can give gifts that truly keep on giving! _ _

December 5, 2016

Christian Standard

To Women, By Women: RAPHA HO– USE

By Jenny Knowles Stephanie Freed was very busy doing busy things, she says, when her father, Joe Garman, issued a challenge. Cambodian Christians that Garman knew well had told him about the epidemic of child trafficking in their country””their own communities. When Garman mentioned the problem to his daughter, Freed”s response was denial: If this was an epidemic, why wasn”t anyone talking about it? That was in 2002. Freed accepted the challenge to research the truth about trafficking and was soon overwhelmed. One UNICEF statistic indicated 1.2 million children disappear into trafficking every year. What difference could one person make

December 3, 2016

Christian Standard

To Women, By Women: LIFECHOICES

By Jenny Knowles The LifeChoices Health Network in Joplin, Missouri, is in pursuit of opportunities to help people, and they”re taking hope on the road. Three area clinics offer the services most of us associate with pregnancy centers””counseling, ultrasounds, and new parent assistance. LifeChoices literature breaks the services down into three groups: prevention, intervention, and extension. Prevention includes the sexual risk avoidance program the network takes into 15 local school districts. Intervention is pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, sexually transmitted infection screening, and treatment. Extension is prenatal, parenting and post-abortion recovery classes, and new dad training. LifeChoices has also added a mobile

November 17, 2016

Christian Standard

The Jesus House

By Jackina Stark After years of guerilla warfare, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) gained complete power over Cambodia in April 1975 to begin Year Zero and form a Communist peasant farming society. Foreigners were expelled, all national and international communications were cut off, health care was eliminated, and the inhabitants of Cambodian cities were evacuated on foot by gunpoint””2 million in Phnom Penh alone. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, monks, former soldiers and their wives and children””all the educated, religious, and wealthy””were executed. Those allowed to live were forced to labor in the fields 18 hours a day, typically

September 1, 2016

Christian Standard

Retiree Helping Lead Fight Against Child Exploitation

By Jennifer Johnson “I can”t tell you I went willingly,” Opal Singleton says. “I was retired and didn”t want to get involved. But God arranged the whole thing.” Million Kids began in 2008 to support the work of Rapha House, a nonprofit organization that works to end the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children. “At the time, Rapha House focused on Cambodia, Thailand, and Haiti, but I began to see more and more trafficking here at home in Southern California,” Singleton says. “In 2010, local law enforcement asked me to be a training coordinator, so I began writing curriculum about

November 16, 2013

Christian Standard

JUST ONE: Dancing in Freedom

TRUE STORIES OF WORLD CHANGERS WHO STARTED ALONE: This month we share stories of individual Christians who couldn”t wait for others to tell them when to help the hurting and share the gospel. Their clear vision of a pressing need pushed them to do what they could as soon as they could. RAPHA HO– USE / www.raphahouse.org   By Stephanie Freed Ten years ago, I walked into a junkyard in Cambodia, near the Thai border, and came face-to-face with an enslaved child for the first time in my life. People who lived in and operated the junkyard owned her. She was

October 26, 2011

Christian Standard

You Must Read This . . . A More Meaningful Story

By Arron Chambers A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story By Donald Miller Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011 I picked up this book because it was a compilation of lessons a favorite author learned while editing his life. I couldn”t put it down, devouring it on one four-hour plane flight, because it was at once both convicting and compelling. I immediately developed the book into a sermon series for my church; it had helped me find a more meaningful story, and I wanted the same for others. At the beginning of the book, Donald

September 24, 2011

Christian Standard

Battling Slave Trade with Nativity Wrapping Paper

By Jennifer Taylor   It may be August, but for the youth group at Martelle Christian Church (Jones, IA) it”s time to think Christmas. At summer camp in 2009, the MCC youth group learned about human trafficking, the millions of people currently enslaved, and the billions of dollars captors earn from victims. “We were shocked by the horrific practice of kidnapping young girls and forcing them to work as prostitutes until they are so filled with disease they are literally thrown out,” explains Troy Titus, youth minister at the church. “I felt moved by God to do something.” The group

December 30, 2007

Christian Standard

More Than All We Ask or Imagine!

By Jackina Stark Transformation is a cultural phenomenon. I know this because I have television. HGTV is practically devoted to it. But I think every network has hopped on the transformation bandwagon. Aren”t you amazed at Extreme Makeover? Of course, most of us are amazed that people would stand before cameras in their underwear and have someone draw lines to show what kind of work is going to be done. What a nightmare! But I must admit the unveiling is exciting, as each brave and transformed soul steps out of the limousine that transports them to their reveal party. I

November 4, 2007

Christian Standard

Weeping With David

By Jackina Stark Mercy, there are a lot of reasons to cry. I went in not so long ago and talked to Ozark Christian College Academic Dean Mark Scott about cutting back my teaching load. I wanted more time to travel, to write, to see the grandchildren and my aging parents. Necessarily, our talk moved to when I would retire altogether, and of course, at that point I started crying. I”m sure he wished I”d just sent a letter. Well, for goodness” sake, he must have thought, what do you want? I want more time to travel, to write, to

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