"Serving the Lord is the singular focus of the Lutheran Women's Missionary League," according to LWML Texas District President Frances Molitor. Pastor David Schultz welcomes Mrs. Molitor to Engaging Truth to discuss the LWML and its mission.

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Welcome to engaging truth. This is Dave Schultz, your host for this particular engaging truth program. Um, during the month of, of August of this year, we are highlighting as many of the ministries of Luther church, Missouri Senate, as we can. And this day, or this evening, we're going to be interviewing Francis Mo she's the new chairperson for the Lutheran women's missionary league. We know it as the L w M L so welcome Francis.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate,

It'd like to, first of all, find out something about who this Francis is. Tell us a little bit about your family.

Oh, right. I, um, Michael and, and hi, my husband, Michael and I have been married for 42 years. We are both lifelong Lutherans. And as you can probably tell by this Southern draw of mine, we've been RA, we were raised in rural Texas. Uh, the Lord has blessed us with four children and we are now also blessed with two lovely daughter-in-laws one great son-in-law and two precious granddaughters who we, uh, enjoy being with indeed, I have currently retired. And so this is afforded me the opportunity to devote the time it takes to guide the women of the L w L Texas district in their mission.

So you have become the chair. When did that election happen?

A lot of things go across your plate. They go across your computer screen, they go across your, your, your, um, your willingness to hear, uh, what other people have to say. But what would you say would be the, the singular focus of the L WM L I mean, we've got many things that you do. What would be the singular focus of what L w N L does?

I would say the single focus is serving the Lord, which is part of our mark motto, and that has served the Lord with gladness and through our serving the Lord, we have been able to reach out to the lost, we've been able to support programs locally and abroad that helps spread the gospel.

You have women in many of our Luther from church, Missouri centered, um, congregations who are part of L WML. They may have a small group within their own church, and they may call it, uh, just any name, like docu or something, but they serve the Lord. And L w M L um, how does, how does a woman become involved with L WM L in other words, a new family moves into a church. They become members of that church. They hear of a women's group. Uh, how does she become involved with that?

Well, hopefully, and prayerfully, someone will invite her through that L w L group and I meeting, she simply expresses a desire to join, to become a part of it. Uh, there's no great initiation vote type thing, or installation. They just simply become part of our L WM L organization as so, therefore it's, it's very easy it's they can find different the different areas that are, are of interest to them. And as you said, previously, some, some circles, some groups will simply meet to sew quilts for Lutheran world relief. They sew lap pads for local, um, homes, hospitals. So there's a numerous ways that a woman can serve through L w L. So our younger women prefer actual physical service projects. So we've been concentrating on that also where we encourage our women to go out into the community and serve at local, um, mercy project areas, pregnancy centers, and so forth some where they can help and that where they can feel they are making a difference,

The pandemic that we are just kind of walking away from very slowly. I hopefully we're walking away from it, uh, causes, uh, or has caused all kinds of different, uh, stresses for P people within the congregational setting. What, what kind of stress did you experience in the very first time until just recently, um, that the pandemic has created for the Luther women's missionary league?

I believe as most, um, of us felt in general is that helplessness, the uncertainty, right? The not knowing what tomorrow, what we would be able to do tomorrow. So we started a very visible campaign via Facebook to engage our women, uh, making suggestions as to how they can continue to gather their might offerings and send them in, in a, in a timely fashion. We also initiated an and use the, our email distribution service quite a bit to, uh, encourage our women, make sure they knew there were plenty of Bible studies out there that they could do via zoom. We worked with introducing our women to zoom. And so a lot of them did adapt in the adapted belt. Well, and as a district, as a whole, we did not see that great of a decrease in our might offerings. So with the Lord is indeed good.

Let me, let me ask the question. And I think you've mentioned it three times in the last, uh, few minutes might offerings what in the world or might offerings, and what significance is that to the ministry of the L w M L?

Francis, where do those might go, then once they're received. Um, and I'm sure that let's say if 250 groups within, uh, the congregations in Texas tribute, mights, they're put together in one place and a decision is made about them. What is that decision? And how is that decision made

At the, at each of our biennial conventions, which starts out our biennial year, we have, um, asked for various missions to, and community missions to submit mission proposals for grants. So in other words, they present us with what they would like to use, or how much they feel like they need to promote and to complete their mission. And we set it, go put it through a betting process, which we have a vice president of hospital outreach that is in charge of that. And once they bond through embedded these mission grants proposals, and our pastoral counselor has reviewed them. Also, we go to our convention body and we ask our voting delegates, you choose which ones do you feel your Lord is calling you to, to support and tugging at your heart. And at that point in time, uh, or prior to that, we have more or less set an estimated might goal for the next two years.

And of course, some, some of that might goal does have to go to our, um, operating cost for the district. And, but we try to keep that to a bare minimum, but from there, it goes, those funds are used to provide, uh, well fund. These funds go to these various mission project, our voting delegate, and that's distributed between by our treasurer, the funds come into our financial secretary. He deposits them. We look at our balance and decide what we can send out each month. And we try to fund a little bit every month toward these various projects.

Well, I I'm familiar with the, the, my box collection because when I was manager of K F U O in St. Louis some years ago that the international, uh, L w L granted that radio station for outreach, the largest gift that it's ever received, uh, that it's given. So, uh, the ladies are generous with their mites. And so thank the Lord for that. Let me just pause for a moment and just do a little bit of PR for, um, our organization. I'm glad you tuned into engaging truth programming today. Let me just take a moment to tell you about who we are. Even life ministries is a group of volunteers in the Houston area who not only plan each of these broadcasts, but they also produce them. Each broadcast is centered upon God's holy word, in particular, the saving grace of Jesus Christ. You can help us with our programming.

First of all, you can pray for this volunteer team, a large team who loves to see each broadcast sent by a new broadcast technology to our country, and even across the world. Secondly, you can support what we do with your dollar giving. How do you do that? Well, go to the website, E L M houston.org and press the donor eight button, many opportunities are there to help you give. Also you can send your support to E L M P O box 5 68, Cypress, Texas. Every gift is receded. Every gift is truly appreciated and used to send the gospel wherever it can go. Thanks for your help. And may Jesus bless you Francis we're back to you. And let me just, um, emphasize the fact again that, um, the women of the L WML have done so many wonderful things within the church over the past years. It's just not just a mic box, but in ministry, they have helped not only, uh, the elderly and not only are the older women as part of the L WML today, but you also have a portion of a new women's group. Talk about that for a moment.

We certainly do, as we have a program, L w L has a program, and that is the young women representative committee. And the purpose of that is to engage our younger women in our L w L and our activities, introduce them to it. Many may not have an idea of what L w L is. So we want them to get to know us. We want them to, uh, to grow with us in faith and service. Uh, we want them to come to love this organization and treasure it the way many of us older members do and . And so through that program, there's various me, uh, mechanisms we use there's resources provided, but these young women, we usually send two young women from our district to the national convention, which this asked convention. I had the pleasure of ate of bringing along with me to convention our district YW RS, Ashley ger, and Jessica lock. So these ladies are now will go out and visit with other women and other young women to get, hopefully to, to, uh, let them know this is, this group is there for them. Also,

Let's say a young woman stumbles across this particular broadcast on Sunday night. And, uh, she says, boy, you know, I've been looking for something that I, I can do with the talent that God has given me. What advice would you give to her at this particular point? She's looking, she doesn't know where to go, but she's interested in hearing what you have just said and said, I'd like to belong to that. How does a young woman contact L WM L and, and what would you be saying to her as a result?

The, we try to direct these young women or any anyone interested to our district website, which is L w L TX D I S t.org. And there we have bunches of information for them have contact information. We have, uh, a listing of the various churches that have L WM L societies in the district. So I, that would be my first suggestion and direction go to the website. And from there, of course, they can always contact me, but there's different vice presidents that serve in various areas. So they, they can reach out to them too. We are here to answer their questions and to hopefully introduce them to our service to Lord. So, and if they don't find an answer there, I would say search through the local congregation, ask around, you're gonna find somebody that knows L and will introduce them to someone locally that could help get them involved.

It's hard for us to look around the corner and make predictions about what may be happening tomorrow in ministry, because that's the working of the holy spirit through his word produces that. But after four years as being president, what would you like to see as the end result of your presidency with L WM L at the conclusion of your ministry opportunity?

Well, Schultz, let's see. I think probably for me with the Lord's through the Lord's grace and guidance, that at the end of my four years, we will see a growth in our L w L district, not necessarily in numbers, but in our faith, in our service, in our goals and our mission to reach out to others. And that, to me is very, very important. We have three areas at, I would like to concentrate on over the next years. One of them, of course, is the Y w R our young women representative program. The second is our heart to heart sisters program, which is there to help introduce our ethnic sisters, to what L w L is and acclimate us to their, um, what's, I've, I've lost the word, but their society as they live, what they know that's, I, I I'm going get that out, I guess, in a, in the proper way eventually, but, um, because it is different, they, their, their background is different. The lives they led were different. We need to become acclimated with that too. This third would be our guest outreach. And that is to hopefully make the women of, uh, the Texas district that ha are hearing impaired. Most of them never knowing what a hear or never having heard a voice or a sound, make them feel comfortable, too. Uh, let them come in, be willing to find ways to make them feel comfortable, welcomed, and need it.

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