Missions & Love Gift Ministries … Fall 2018

Hello all of you beautiful women of God,

AB Women’s Ministries of NY State is a Christ-centered ministry with a commitment to encourage and empower women and girls to serve God. Restoring women and girls to God’s intentions and purpose is a mission unique to AB Women’s Ministries within our denomination.

Our mission is not limited to empowering women and girls for Christ. We focus on ministering to empower and educating women and girls on immigration, forced labor, cross-cultural relationships, economic empowerment, sex-trafficking and more . There are some ideas for hands on projects on the AB Women’s Ministries page here.

Please pray for all the different missions and ministries as we go out to spread God’s love. Whom do you see around you that you can love on?
There are many ways to help women near you. Do you see a young woman that needs new clothes? How about a mom that is raising her children by herself most of the time can you help them out in some way?

Please pray for and support our ABW National 2018-2019 Mission Focus: Domestic Violence. More on our Mission Focus can be found here.

Domestic Violence

Please note that a lot of this information is summarized from  The National Domestic Violence Hotline please visit them at: www.thehotline.org/

Do you or someone you know need help or more information on domestic violence?

Domestic Violence, Intimate Partner Violence, Domestic abuse …. Are all the same thing. A set of behaviors used by one over another to retain power and control in a relationship. It does not discriminate along any lines of race, sexual orientation, age, religion, etc. People of all socioeconomic and educational backgrounds can be affected.

What it is are behaviors that prevent a partner from doing something or force them to behave a certain way, usually by inducing fear and/or physical harm. Many times there are multiple aspects of abuse in a relationship.

(c)opyright the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project www.thehotline.org

The power and control diagram shown here from the Hotline.org, is helpful in understanding patterns of abuse behaviors used to maintain control in an abusive relationship. Some of these more violent incidents are accompanied by the less easily identified, but established patterns of intimidation in a relationship.

The inner ring is subtler behaviors, the outer represents more physical violence. Often the more recognizable violent acts, shadow and reinforce the subtler methods of abuse.

It’s not always easy to tell at the beginning of a relationship, if it will be abusive.

It also does not look the same in every relationship as every relationship is different.

Please if you or a loved one are experiencing domestic violence, call the domestic violence hotline at

1-800-799-7233 or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY) and visit www.thehotline.org

There is a lot more information on the website giving more signs of abusive relationships a few are:

• Keeping someone from seeing friends or family members
• Controlling all money spent
• Telling you that you can never do anything right
• Preventing you from working or attending school
• Pressuring you for sex, or to use drugs or alcohol.

Someone you know has been there. There is help.

Love Gift:

Love Gift is a financial contribution over and above our regular giving. It was designed to be given out of a sense of LOVE, FAITH, and GRATITUDE to God for all of God’s blessings, and a recognition of our need to share these blessings with others.

Take time to assess what you offer to God. How do you love God? Count the ways. Let your Love Gift offering reflect your love of God and Christ’s church and its ministries.

One of those ministries is American Baptist Women. But in the taking of Love Gift, only a small portion comes back to ABW for our ministry needs. Don’t feel the push to not take a Love Gift offering, but keep it as an over and above the regular giving to the needs of the ministries like American Baptist Women on bot the state and national level.

Ways you could expand Love Gift would include having your entire church support American Baptist Mission through it. At this time less than 50% of churches participate. Set some goals.  Involve the entire church by sponsoring annual Love Gift activities such as:

• Love Gift Tea
• International Tea
• Everybody’s Birthday Party
• Love Gift Luncheon
• Incentives for reaching goals

In closing, please pray for all the different missions and ministries as we go out to spread God’s love. If you need more information please contact me.

Yours in Love & Service, Vicky