2010 Mission Trip List

There are many opportunities to be involved in missions through Applewood Baptist Church. Our members are invited to:

• Attend a World Missions Conference highlighted by missionary guests and special speakers. Information about our mission trips is also available at the Ministry Fair.
  

• Participate in short-term overseas mission trips
  

• Participate in specific ongoing local opportunities such as prison ministry, AWANA, church planting, benevolence ministry, bus ministry, apartment ministry, and discipleship.
  

• Regularly support international missions financially through the Southern Baptist Convention Cooperative Program
  

• Give sacrificially to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions, and the Nicy Murphy Offering for State Missions, as well as hunger relief and special mission efforts.

In the past five decades, Applewood has commissioned twenty-four career missionaries into foreign missions and more than 900 Applewood volunteers have been on partnership trips overseas. Teams from Applewood have ministered in 35 countries. We have been involved in starting churches in Colorado and internationally. It has been our privilege and honor to share the Gospel and serve the Lord around the world.

Jesus said in Luke 19:10, "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." (NIV)  As a church we are called to do the same thing.  Come join God in what God is doing! Visit the International Mission Board to find out more about opportunities for involvement in world missions.

Applewood works with national leaders in other countries as well as with our International Mission Board to coordinate mission trips.

(see photos below)

Applewood and Immanuel Community Church of Ft. Collins have teamed up for several medical mission trips to the central Andes Mountains of Peru. They encountered many people with medical problems associated with water-borne diseases. During the March 2009 trip, Applewood member Tom Armitage, a professional engineer with 18 years experience in water and wastewater treatment, visited five communities in the area to evaluate the water systems.

As suspected, water sources were either open irrigation ditches flowing through animal pastures or shallow “spring boxes” affected by animal grazing, application of fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticides. After the trip, planning began on a water treatment solution.

Due to funding constraints, just one community was selected as a starting point for installation of a consistent disinfection treatment system for drinking water. We were able to obtain support from Hach Company in Fort Collins, who donated monitoring equipment and SanTec in Castle Rock who provided a tablet chlorination system at cost. Treatment system designs were developed in late 2009 and plans made for a five-week trip to Colca and Los Angeles, Peru.

Step one of the project would be installation of a simple, easy to operate, tablet chlorination design for gravity flow installation. Step two (dependent on future funding) is a solar-powered water filtration treatment system. This filtration system can provide 1 to 2.5 gallons of drinking water per person per day in Colca for pennies per gallon. The system has a capacity of 5,000 gallons per day and will pay for itself and provide two more systems for other communities within three years if each system sells a portion of its capacity.

Approvals from the Department of Health, Department of Sanitation and the local community were needed. During the approval process we had a number of conversations with mayors in the communities. One mayor, Teofilo (Child of God), was very interested in the treatment systems. After a tour of his water system, we had a 45 minute conversation about why we were there and what we were doing. During this conversation, Tom was able to share the gospel, and Teofilo accepted Christ. Teofilo’s was not the only salvation on the trip. During daily Bible studies, many more people came to know Jesus as Lord.

While approvals for the disinfection system and the future filtration system were granted within the first 2 and 1/2 weeks, the actual installation encountered problems. Transportation logistics, rain, and the need for special parts created delays. The project was competed on January 12, 2010, Tom’s last week in Peru. The system worked, producing chlorine disinfection sufficient to kill some bacteria and many viruses in the drinking water.           

Members of the team volunteered from one to four weeks in Peru, and Tom stayed for 5 weeks. Two churches in Huancayo assisted, as well as Jason Homer and his wife Bethel, Javier Caceres our interpreter, Jim Gilcrest, and other IMB missionaries.

For more information about water purification projects in Peru, please contact Tom Armitage.