An integral part of the Values Statement of our church, part of our DNA if you will, is the desire for us to be transformational agents for Jesus Christ in the Andover area, in New England and throughout the world.

The church has formed an outreach team to help direct our efforts toward this objective, and this team has developed a set of operating principles to guide us in our efforts. These principles are:

·         We look to support people and projects where we as a church, or as individuals operating with our blessing within our church, will be actively involved both prayerfully and personally. As a general rule, we don't just want to send money.

·         We desire to support fewer projects at a deeper financial and personal involvement level rather than many projects at a more superficial level.

·         We want our involvement and support to be a combination of meeting physical and spiritual needs, and not just a social gospel or just a spiritual gospel ministry. We want to embody the whole gospel.

·         We want to be a church and people who care for orphans, widows, prisoners and homeless locally, regionally and globally as Jesus asks us to do, including verses such as James 1:27, Matthew 25:34-36, and Matthew 28:19-20.

In our first twelve months as a church, GracePoint has been active in several important projects including:

• The Face of A Child Program. Almost the entire church was involved this Fall in purchasing backpacks and filling them with clothing and school supplies for orphans in Tocuz, Moldova. GracePoint provided all the backpacks for these orphans - over 125 in total. Then this past January, Colleen Young, from our church, went to Moldova to hand out the backpacks to these children and to show them the love of Jesus. In return, Colleen was greatly blessed by them and their reception.
• Bathrooms for a Moldova orphanage. We learned last Fall that another of the orphanages, this one in Drochia, Moldova, has over 300 orphans using outdoor shower facilities with no hot water and run down toilet facilities with virtually no working plumbing. The church decided to take action. We worked with a sister Christian organization in Moldova to completely renovate all the bathrooms in the orphanage. Our church spent $60,000 to complete the long overdue work on these bathrooms. Radio and television stations have been to Drochia because of this project, and the children have expressed their excitement over these new facilities. One of the Christian workers said, "This is a huge blessing and will change the lives of these 300 children. They will no longer have to walk down the road in the cold to another building to take showers in a very run down facility. They will actually have hot water! The girls and boys will actually have their own separate facilities, no longer will they have to organize bathroom time to separate the boys from the girls." There will be an opportunity in the coming year for hopefully 3 or more people from our church to go to Moldova and share the love of Jesus with these children. Please pray whether God is directing you to consider this opportunity.
• Several local and regional projects. These projects, which were organized by members of the congregation, provided loving, practical care and Christian fellowship to people in our local area. Many of our people participated in The Angel Tree Project by purchasing Christmas gifts for local children whose parent or parents are incarcerated. Several of our Life Groups provided practical support in the form of needed supplies for a battered Women's shelter in the Merrimack Valley. And for over a year, some within our church have taken home-bound seniors grocery shopping.

Thank you all for your participation and support of these projects to meet these basic needs, and to demonstrate the love of Jesus to so many people in different circumstances and geographies.