Twin Falls

TWIN FALLS, ID – “You’re going to want to sit down for what I’m about to tell you.” When you’re a church planter and Mike Palmer, Send Utah-Idaho Network Coordinator uses that sentence to begin a conversation with you, you know God is about to do something big. And that’s just what happened in November and December of 2021. For the next six weeks, the UISBC helped Twin Falls Community Church serve 10,800 boxes of food filled with produce, milk, and yogurt to the Magic Valley Community in Idaho.

Though our conversation happened in the second week of November, the people of Twin Falls Community Church had been praying for several months that God would open doors to help us reach three local people groups: Refugees, the Foster Care System, and the Public School System. When I received the phone call from Mike, I knew immediately that God was answering our corporate prayer requests. Mike explained that an anonymous donor had given 1800 boxes of food to be delivered every Monday from November 22 to the end of the year. Though we were not yet a year old and only had 17 members of our baby church, I knew that God was going to take our “five loaves and two fish” to literally feed five thousand…10,800 to be precise.

Since we were a baby church, I reached out to Pastor Paul Thompson of Eastside Baptist Church and a handful of other pastors in our area to ask them if they would join us in serving our community. I explained that our goal was not just to fill bellies but to feed souls. Every pastor I asked was eager to jump on board, including a handful of pastors who are not a part of the Southern Baptist Convention. I asked 9Marks ministries to donate tracts to hand out and asked the UISBC to help us with funding to be able to support such a missions endeavor. God answered prayer after prayer.

Through the collaborative work of six local churches (SBC and non-SBC), God gave us the opportunity to reach our three target people groups mentioned above, as well as hundreds more in the Magic Valley. While food distribution is not our mission as a church, it is a part of our function as a church as we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves…to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this broken world.

We praise God for what He accomplished this last year and look forward to seeing HIM yield more fruit for His glory in the coming days, weeks, months, and years. We also thank the churches of the UISBC that helped Twin Falls Community Church pull off such a large operation. We pray that God will continue to water the seeds of the gospel that were planted at the end of 2021 and that those seeds will yield fruit for His glory for all eternity.

Aaron Scott is the planting pastor of Twin Falls Community Church in the Magic Valley Association of Idaho.  

If you or your church would like to be a part of stories like this, reach out to one of our UISBC Missionary staff and we would be happy to brainstorm ways in which we can assist you in your mission to reach your community. Funding may be available from our State Missions Offering accounts, as well as through our national network partnerships.