Global Ministries

The Great Commission Fund of the Christian and Missionary Alliance

Missionaries are supported one of two ways at Bayside:  personal giving and the Great Commission Fund.

Individuals within Bayside are free to support any ministry or missionary that God lays upon their heart.  From time to time the elders bring before the church family ministries or missionaries for reports and updates.  As they share, our prayer is that the Holy Spirit would speak to individuals and allow them to decide if God would want them to support these ministries.

The Great Commission Fund (GCF) is the main source of financial support for missionaries sent out through the Christian and Missionary Alliance.  Each year the elders encourage the church family to prayerfully consider making a "faith promise" commitment of financial support to the GCF for that year.  If you would like more information about the GCF or missionaries with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA), visit www.cmalliance.org.

Missionaries in Our Church Family

Becky Barnes - teaching in Senegal at Dakar Academy with the CMA

Bob and Deb Boogaard - pilot in Papua New Guinea with Wycliffe

Bob and Brenda Boston - church planters in Paraguay with the CMA

Dr Bob and Elaine Greene - orthopedic surgeon who travels into remote areas (Afghanistan, Guinea, Mercy Ships) and performs miraculous surgeries and trains workers.

Sanford and Wendie Hashimoto - church planters in Brazil with the CMA

Barry and Kimberly Horst - serving in Honduras with the Brethren in Christ

Victor Quon - Asian American Christian Fellowship

Honili Sema - director of House of Grace and Heritage House with City Team, San Jose, Ca

Sarah - teaches English as a Second Language in an Asian country and shares her faith with students

A couple who are international workers in West Africa

Mary and Martha Women's Ministry

Mary and Martha were sisters of Lazarus, a close friend of Jesus.  In Luke 10:38-42 Jesus stays at the home of Martha and her husband.  While Mary sat with others and listened to Jesus, Martha looked after the needs of the guests.  The "Mary Martha's" of Bayside is a group of women who seek to meet the spiritual and physical needs of adults and children around the world.  Thy collect stamps that are sold to collectors and the money raised is used to buy Spanish Bible materials.  They knit outfits for premature babies in Gabon, Africa and turn bed linens into strips of bandages for medical workers in Africa.  The also prepare small quilts for infants who die prematurely.  These quilts are given to Valley Medical Hospital and the parents are able to wrap their child in the quilt and have a photo taken to remember their child.  The parents then get to keep the quilt as a special gift from Bayside during their time of loss.

If you would like to donate items to the Mary Martha's, please contact the church office.

Bayside Short Term Missions Trips

Arizona and Mexico, July-August, 2008

Laurel Thorburn served with Young Life, working with teens at a camp in Arizona and helping to lead a group of teens on a work project in Mexico.

Kosovo, June, 2008 and June, 2009

Jonathan Durstenfeld served in Kosovo, helping missionaries in various ways.

Africa - July, 2007

Bob and Becky Durstenfeld spent 2 ½ weeks in Tanzania and Kenya. Here is Becky’s report on the trip:

This was a very different kind of missions trip than we had been on before because we were not part of a group with a planned agenda. We spent time with 13 + missionaries, being flexible and open to whatever God wanted us to do each day. We really enjoyed the week and two days we had with one missionary couple, Steve and Carol Lyons. They live in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, called Vingunguti.  They received permission from the authorities to provide six teachers every three years for nine years for the school after building three classrooms for the school.  The Lyons will train the teachers, who will also be church planters, with a goal to make disciples primarily among the Zaramo people who have moved into the city.

Bob spent most of his time helping Steve and Carol with computer issues.  He also did a fire risk/safety assessment for a Christian school.  I had much time to pray, though was only able to do one actual prayer walk. I prayed in the house, as we drove (the roads are scary and we came very close to being hit by a big bus) & at the public school.  We went to two Vingunguti church planting team meetings, the Evangelical Free Church missionary meeting, to church in Buguruni (the neighborhood where Steve and Carol used to live and where I prayer walked eight years ago). We visited their Tanzanian co-workers in their home, too. We also had lunch with another missionary couple and visited two missionary doctors and their 5-week-old twin baby boys!  

We were able to go into a remote Zaramo village.  The missionaries there are preparing for a team that is coming soon to stay for 2 years. They adopted an adorable African baby who is 14 months old. We spent nine hours with this family driving to Arusha. It was a beautiful, but long and bumpy ride.  

In Arusha, we went on an safari, which was awesome, in the scenery and the many animals we saw. The safari guide is a very nice Christian man we enjoyed getting to know and he was very helpful.

Our 6 1/2 hour bus ride to Nairobi (much of which was in the dark) was an adventure. We walked across the border from Tanzania into Kenya and were stopped at several military roadblocks; one soldier came into the bus. Our time in Nairobi was good. We were able to spend time with two missionary couples. We got a tour of the Africa Inland Mission's International Services office and hangar as well as a tour of a women's sewing project facility. We also had dinner with a Kenyan family. God arranged it so we were able to visit with friends with SIM who work with Somali refugees in Ohio. They lived in Nairobi until 5 years ago and had come back with a short-term missions team; they were able to see the fruit from seeds planted when they were lived in Nairobi.

Our visits, help and prayers encouraged the missionaries.  We can now pray more specifically for God’s work there.

Asia - October, 2006

Linda Peevyhouse and a group of friends from around the United States traveled to Asia and learned of different opportunities to pray for the people.

Costa Rica and Nicaragua - July, 2006

Bayside sent a team of ten, Pastor Mike Thorburn, Daniel Thorburn, Jere  & Jessica Allen, Bob, Becky, Tim & Jonathan Durstenfeld, Krista Gillette and Michele Prentice, on a two-week missions trip to Costa Rica in July 2006 to assist two national Christian & Missionary Alliance churches. Team unity was great and we worked well together. The team’s leaders/translators were Sid from Texas and Steve Bush from Honduras. The four teenagers on our team opened up doors to reach the teens there. Though there were challenges, they saw God working in many ways.
 

God abundantly supplied the finances for everyone on the team. A generous amount of supplies were donated from Bayside; so many were involved in this trip besides those who were able to go.  The team gave out hundreds of hygiene kits and gave clothes, toothbrushes, toothpaste, recreation equipment and craft supplies to three different ministries in Costa Rica and one in Honduras. 
 

They were prepared to do two 4-day children’s programs, plus another one day one for 30 – 150 kids, thinking we would be at schools.  They ended up doing ten different children's programs in eight locations!  There were from 20 to 60 kids. They did programs at: a bilingual school, two towns along rivers (one of which was on the border of Nicaragua and most of the children there were Nicaraguan), two neighborhoods in the Sarapaqui area, the Sarapaqui church Sunday School (teaching the adult, youth, and children's classes), a feeding station for street kids in the Colima neighborhood of San Jose, Costa Rica and the church in Colima.  There was a definite difference between the country and the inner city kids!   
 

One of the highlights of the trip was going into the two Sarapaqui neighborhoods, Mira Flores and Four Corners. The team delivered invitations and prayed at each home the day before presenting the programs.  The Four Corners neighborhood was a new area of outreach for the church and the whole community came!  We played games with the children and did the craft with the adults. Two of the ladies on the team also gave their testimonies and were well received. 
 

At the Sarapaqui church, the team helped build a bus barn using wooden posts, metal beams and tarps made from recycled billboard signs to help protect the school bus that is used for transporting people to church. They also did yard work. In Colima, a few people helped paint the sanctuary. God gave the strength and energy to do what He wanted them to do.  
 

Pastor Mike gave the sermon at both churches.  At the worship service in Sarapaqui, Jonathan and Jessica gave their testimonies. They learned that drugs and alcohol are huge problems in both the country and the city, which surprised us.  Pastor Rodrigo and his wife, Aydee, in Sarapaqui do a lot of counseling and have seen lives transformed through Christ.  The team from Bayside were privileged to come alongside these Costa Rican pastors and churches to help in their ministry.

Peru - February and June, 2006

Laurel Thorburn traveled to Peru with a team from Young Life, a high school ministry at Willow Glen High School.  The team conducted youth ministry and worked with orphans for one week in February and then Laurel returned for three weeks in June and part of July to continue to work at the orphanage.