How You Can Help

If you could help a missionary without cost to you, would you do it?  Here’s your chance!  My name is Debbie Wohler.  I’ve been a Home Missionary for the North American Mission Board in the Tahoe City, CA area for 29 years.  During the school year we minister to 90-100 children a day.  In the summer there are even more children!  I also coordinate church services at 6 different ski areas each Sunday during the ski season. 

In the past three years, we’ve collected enough of the items listed below to get three vans for the mission work!  The mission work and the church are in need of housing for future staff.  Because we minister in a resort area, the cost of housing is very outrageous in our area ($700,000-$1.5 million to buy a normal house.)  If we don’t get housing for future missionaries and a pastor, the mission work here won’t be able to continue after those of us who are here now retire.

Picture of our van from money earned with your help!

Empties4Cash Project
We are asking you and your church to save empty computer inkjet print cartridges, laser toners, and cell phones that are no longer being used. We can get cash for these items! Wouldn’t it be great to help a mission project that tells children and families about Jesus? This will be an ongoing project. There is no deadline for completion. We’ll collect until we reach our goal. We will send you a monthly update via e-mail. This update has stories about the mission work, financial reports on the project, and updates on how to ship your items. If you don't have an email address, you can view the monthly update on our website under the "News" section.
Think you can help? Click here to read more details!

I Give Project  

We’ve found another easy way to make money toward our goal of getting houses for future staff.  Best of all, it’s by doing something that most of you, are already doing!  Who knew that God could use online shopping for His purposes!

I discovered online shopping last year and did most of my Christmas shopping online.  It saved gas and kept me out of the mall during the crazy shopping days.  “I Give” has 724 online stores that give a percentage of your purchase amount to us, once you sign up and purchase an item.  The percentages range from .08% all the way up to 26%.  You may think, “I don’t do enough online shopping to make a difference.”  As I looked at the list, I had shopped online at several of these stores last year.  Some of the online stores affiliated with “I Give” that I already use are:  Amazon.com; Barnes and Noble; Best Buy.com, Cheap Tickets, Dell, E-bay, Rental car companies, Snapfish, Hotwire, Expedia, Travelocity, Apple iTunes, iPod stores, etc.  If you’ve booked a plane ticket, car, or hotel online this past year, part of your purchase price could have helped us out.  The list is very comprehensive.  Go to:  www.igive.com to see the complete list of stores.      

This whole process is easy.  Go to:  www.igive.com/FBCTC  It will take you about 3 minutes to sign up.  Then all you do is shop online like normal.  When you are on the websites of one of the companies of “I Give,” a small pop-up comes up in the left corner to let you know that this website is one of their companies.  It tells you what percentage of your purchase we’ll receive.  You don’t have to do anything else!!  It is all automatic.  Once you sign up, restart your computer for this to start working.  If you don’t want to restart your computer now, just wait to shop until you turn your computer on the next day and it will be automatic.  It looks like you can even get a tax donation receipt from the company at the end of the year!  

“I Give” will also donate an extra $5 to us when you make your first online purchase within 45 days of joining. Those $5 donations can really add up so shop online and encourage others to do so.

They have one more interesting feature that I’ve signed up for through “I Give.”  It’s called, “ISearchIGive.”  I downloaded the “ISearchIGive” internet search toolbar from the “I Give” webpage.  www.igive.com  Let me speak English.  It’s like what you do when you use “Google, Yahoo, etc. ” or another internet search engine to find information or a web site.  They’ll give us .02 for any web site we visit until September 30th and .01 after that date for any web site visited using “ISearchIGive.”   (It’s very easy or believe me I couldn’t do it!)  It shows up on your internet explorer toolbar.  A couple of my friends have already done this and we’ve gotten .48 cents in just the last day by using it for our internet searches!  Can you imagine if we multiply this out to the 500 of you on the e-mail list?  You don’t even have to buy anything for us to get the money through “ISearchIGive.”  If you have questions, please let me know.

Please stop reading right now and go to:   www.igive.com/FBCTC and sign up right now.  If you don’t, you’ll have good intentions but will probably forget to do it!

Campbell’s Soup Labels
From 1995-2000 Debbie Wohler enlisted over 3,700 Baptist churches from around the country to collect Campbell’s soup labels. We received over 3.3 million soup labels. This was enough for two fifteen passenger vans and one seven passenger van. Our dream was to make this a national project and pass the project on from one Home Missionary to another. We passed the project on to a mission project in Arkansas and they got computers for their Christian Job Corp ministry. The project then went to Jack Little and Tim Rice in Charleston, SC. They got a 15 passenger van for the mission work there. Please send your Campbell’s soup labels to the following Home Missionaries:

Remember, Campbell’s wants the UPC code for most products now.  For more information go to www.labelsforeducation.com or call

1.800.424.5331.

The Church that God Built
On April 1, 2001 we had the last service in our old building. We were simply out of room! The old building was 3,300 square feet. The old building was the old Wells Fargo Bank building. In the late 1960’s the bank building was put on rollers and dragged to the current location on Fairway Dr. We used that building for over 30 years. We are grateful for those who came before us and had the foresight and faith to buy the property and that building. While we were in the building process we held worship services and ministries at the North Tahoe High School.

On June 16, 2002 we had our first service in our new building. What a joyous day that was! The church owns 2.2 acres one block from Lake Tahoe. We were able to build a 7,800 square foot building that has a lake view. This was the biggest building allowed on the property by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. The new building was built primarily by volunteers. Texas Baptist Men and volunteer groups from Georgia and Califorania joined our local people in building our new building. As of December 31, 2007 we paid off the loan on our building. We paid off a 15 year loan in only 5 years! God once again provided.

Future Staff Housing
Pray for the church. Our community is drastically changing. More and more locals are moving away and more homes are now owned by second homeowners. Pray that the staff and church will see how God wants us to minister in this changing environment. Pray that God would provide money for a future house for staff. The cost of housing is very high here. It costs $700,000-$1.5 million to buy a small to medium sized house here. We need to get a least 4 houses to just keep what we have going. With the age of our current staff we have between 5-15 years to solve this problem. We have a BIG GOD and we know He can meet this need so that we can continue to share God’s love here in Tahoe City.

If you would like to contribute to the staff housing fund, please make the check out to First Baptist Church of Tahoe City
PO Box 7452 or 409
Tahoe City, CA 96145.

All donations are tax deductible.