A special offering received during the Woman's Missionary Union Missions Extravaganza April 5 demonstrates the heart, purpose and commitment of this dedicated cadre.

WMU staff resigned their positions with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina last year and WMU was removed as a recipient of North Carolina Missions Offering funds. Giving up their office support and missions offering, WMU started 2008 basically with no income.

In January WMU reinstituted the dormant Heck-Jones Offering for its own support. Executive Director Ruby Fulbright announced April 5 that gifts to date totaled $336,610. While the audience applauded the news, that amount is just 15 week's operating funds on the $1.14 million budget the women approved. Other funds are coming in from individual and church donors, but if the Heck-Jones Offering is to be the organization's life blood the doctor needs to order another pint of platelets.

That's some background, but Heck-Jones is not the offering I'm talking about.

Remember, Missions Extravaganza gathers WMU's most faithful, committed and enthusiastic members, women giving up a weekend to do business, be inspired and learn during dozens of special interest sessions. They don't sit on their wallets and they expect to be asked to contribute financially.

And WMU did receive an offering: for someone else.

Missionary is WMU's middle name and missionaries and their children can have their way with WMU like a spoiled child at the family reunion. "Re-entry" for missionary children returning to the United States to begin their college careers after growing up in another nation is often very difficult for them.

They are not coming home, they are leaving home to begin a life in this strange, fast, foreign land of their parents' birth. It is such a difficult journey for many that missionary Doris Walters wrote a moving and insightful book about her counseling experiences with these young adults: "The Untold Story:" Missionary Kids Speak From The Ends Of The Earth.

To aide that re-entry, North Carolina WMU is sponsoring a retreat in August at Mundo Vista for missionary kids from all over the world, who will be leaving the retreat for destinations all over the United States. The offering WMU received at Missions Extravaganza was for that retreat.

"It's not in the budget," Fulbright said. But the opportunity to meet that need is so compelling and important that WMU received a special offering among their members for it, even in the face of their own compelling need for day to day operating income. Stepping into the unbudgeted chasm of trust builds a bridge of faith.

WMU's new address, to which they will move the week of April 14, is 1200 Front Street, Suite 110, Raleigh, NC 27609. You can help with the re-entry retreat or the Heck Jones Offering by sending a gift to that address.