During the day, the 34-year-old Dorothy Day Center provides meals, mental health services and medical care, showers, and much more to help people experiencing homelessness. Catholic Charities’ Housing First staff work to help guests move from Dorothy Day Center into permanent housing. At night, Dorothy Day Center becomes an emergency shelter, providing a safe place for more than 200 people to get rest.
Nightly emergency shelter is provided for single adult men and women on a first come, first serve basis. The shelter is open every day. 

The first Saturday of each odd month we send teams to help prepare and serve a meal to the homeless and needy in downtown St. Paul. To sign up and get involved contact Tim & Cindy Wiant at 715-426-7972 or dorothyday@fiveoakschurch.org.

For more information on the Dorothy Day Center, visit their site HERE.

Feed My Starving Children is a non-profit Christian organization committed to feeding God’s children hungry in body and spirit. The approach is simple: children and adults hand-pack meals specifically formulated for malnourished children, and we ship these meals to our distribution partners. FMSC meals have reached nearly 70 countries around the world in our history.

At Five Oaks, we have partnered with FMSC for 6 years now. This year Five Oaks, in partnership with the City of Woodbury and numerous local organizations, will participate in a community wide MobilePack Event. We will come together to pack 4 million meals for starving children worldwide! 

To find how you can be involved with Five Oaks and FMSC contact FMSC@fiveoakschurch.org or visit FMSC.org.

In July, we host a backpack drive for the Children of Karen refugees in St. Paul. We invite everyone of purchase and fill a backpack with necessary school supplies.

In addition, the Bryant's small group hosts a Karen summer Vacation Bible School at the Brittany Apartments in St. Paul. 

To get involved with the Karen refugees in St. Paul, contact __ or the Bryant's for summer VBS. For more information on the Karen Organization of Minnesota, check out their site HERE.

We partner with Kid's Hope USA and Woodbury Elementary to build caring relationships and give hope to local children. Mentors volunteer one hour a week. Prayer Partners provide prayer.

One child, one hour, one church, one school. 

Learn more about Kids Hope USA here.

New Life Family Services, work with women and men who believe abortion is the “only” solution to an unplanned pregnancy. Through practical and spiritual counsel, they provide education and support with the hope each client will make a life-affirming decision for their unborn child.

In January we run a Diaper Drive to collect diapers for young mothers who have chosen life over abortion and are enrolled in NLFS's Parenting Plus Program. 

For further information on NLFS and the services they provide, please visit NLFS.org or contact NLFS@fiveoakschurch.org to help us partner with NLFS.

Join the Five Oaks Road Runners and help bring clean drinking water to African communities who lack this most basic necessity.

In 2014, we got 35 Road Runners across the Twin Cities Marathon finish line. We were also the #1 fundraising team in the Metro. 

To get involved, contact Kevin Johnson at kjohnson@fiveoakschurch.org or visit teamworldvision.org.

The Union Gospel Mission is a Christian ministry dedicated to serving the homeless, poor, and addicted in our community. Providing safe shelter, nutritious food, dental and medical care, and a broad variety of life-changing programs, the Mission helps people rebuild their lives – physically, emotionally, spiritually and educationally.

In the fall we come together to feed the hungry and needy for Thanksgiving as we fill hundreds of UGM Thanksgiving Bags.

Interested in tutoring, childcare or mentoring? UGM offers after school tutoring at Asian Ministry Center for K-6th grades, childcare at Naomi Center in St. Paul on Wednesdays for single mothers taking classes, and opportunities to assist, teach, mentor or tutor at Men's Campus.

Get get more involved with UGM contact Kevin Johnson at UGM@fiveoakschurch.org. Or visit their site, ugmtc.org.

For more information on the work being done in Nicaragua check out their website.

Partner with Camino de Vida Church, Brazos Abiertos Ministries

Spain // GEM

adrover62@gmail.com
vikysalo@gmail.com

We meet each other at church; after a few months dating we get married in November 1986. Dan was born in 1992 and Ruth in 1998.

We both were active at church working in different areas; Pedro served on the evangelism committee, preparing the church bulletin and as a greeter. Viky worked at the Sunday school and helped with the teenagers group. Together we leaded the ALPHA program, an evangelistic ministry.

In the summers of 2001 and 2002, we attended family camp at L’Arcada, after the first summer both of us was pretty sure that this was our place to serve, so we decided to pray about it, the next year we offered ourselves to volunteer at camp. In 2004, after a lot of prayer we  share with the staff what was in our hearts about join them working full time, and they were more than happy about our decision. After more than two years helping there and also sharing with friends and churches about the ministry and the need of support, the director of L’Arcada proposed us to go to the USA to have some training and also to finish our support raising.

In 2007/08 we did a year of training at Camp Forest Springs, in Westboro, Wisconsin, with their program called LTD (Leadership, Training and Development), it is an accredited college curriculum course for camping ministry. In May 2009 we get back to Spain, to start working full time at L’Arcada, even though we need to finish raising our personal financial needs.

Rockford, IL // EFCA

rock.bliss@efca.org

Rocky & Rachel Bliss serve full-time with ReachGlobal's child sponsorship program, GlobalFingerprints. They recently opened the GlobalFingerprints Indonesia site. Their duties include: promoting GlobalFingerprints at conferences, developing advocates at various churches, and opening new sites in Asia and other areas of the world. 

Rocky is helping with the data maintenance work that is so necessary for the health of a good sponsorship program. 

Rachel also helps mobilize TREK7 teams in the Michigan colleges she visits. The reality is that many of the TREK7 opportunities are with GlobalFingerprints teams around the world! Five students that participated in TREK7 this year came out of Rachel’s recruitment efforts. That's enough to encourage her to keep doing her part to get new workers to the harvest field.

Please pray for both of them and that this coming year will be one of growth so that more children can thrive and learn about Jesus.

Berlin, Germany // EFCA

dennis.debruyn@efca.org
nicole.debruyn@efca.org

Denny and Nicole deBruyn are from Minneapolis, MN. They were married in May, 2001 and have 3 children. Since 2001, they were actively involved in two church-plants in the Minneapolis area (Woodland Fellowship, and Hiawatha Church) until moving to Berlin in July, 2014. Denny and Nicole have a passion for disciplemaking and want to see the hearts and lives of all people impacted by the love of Jesus Christ. They’ve been involved in leading small-groups and Bible-studies, serving in their churches in several ways, and investing in the lives of men and women to see them become lovers and followers of Jesus. They joined the ReachGlobal team in Berlin to be involved in seeing 100 gospel initiatives throughout the entire city that will ultimately lead to the raising up of disciplemakers and multiplication of transformational churches in Berlin. You can follow them at thedebruyns.com.

Hollywood, CA // GCM

greg.larson@reliant.org

The Larson family leads Kairos Hollywood - a Jesus community in East Hollywood committed to worship, community, and service. We are a missional church, focused on church planting. Planted in 2002, we desire to see missional communities thrive and reproduce in Los Angeles and beyond. Kairos Hollywood is sisters with kairos Westwood and kairos antelope valley, part of kairos Los Angeles and the Ecclesia Network, and the Missio Alliance.

Minnesota // Christar

rickdenise83@msn.com

Rick and Denise are currently on extended furlough in the US as Rick completes his doctoral studies concerning the North African Muslim Convert and the Church in an effort to better understand how new believers can become stable, contributing members of local churches. They anticipate a move to Kitchener, ON (near Toronto) in the Summer of 2015, where they will engage Muslim immigrants with the Gospel and contribute to Missions education (with an emphasis on Islam and reaching Muslims) at Emmanuel Bible College.

Camp de Cimes, France // GEM

rose.chanita@gmail.com
lynnlindquist@mac.com

Lynn was born and raised in Princeton, MN. He first went to France in 1977 on a summer missions trip while he was attending Letourneau College. Upon his graduation in 1979 he felt that France was where he could use his talents and was where God wanted him to stay. Rose, who is originally from the Netherlands, grew up on the mission field in Surinam (South America) and Europe. She and Lynn met at a Bible School, north of Paris.

They are involved in Christian Camping, which they feel to be a valuable tool to reach young people and adults who would normally never set foot inside a church. “Seeing individuals’ lives changed, confirms for them, that the ministry of Camp of the Peaks is an important way of reaching the People of France.”

Costa Rica // LAM

williamdmarkham@gmail.com

The Markham family is currently living in Lake Jackson, TX and plan on traveling back to Costa Rica on 2013. This trip will be spent working on projects to modernize and enhance learning at La Palabra de Vida Christian Academy in in San Antonio de Belen, Costa Rica. This school currently has 350 students and prepares Costa Rican children to lead their country with the right mix of education, Christian principles, and a solid foundation in the word of God.

Minnesota // EFAC

craig.mcclun@efca.org

In 2008 Craig began as Missions Network Director where his primary focus is with church mission’s pastors and church mission’s leaders.  In this time he has expanded a peer leading network that will enable them and their churches to grow more effective in global outreach. He is also providing resources and building relationship that will assist churches in the task of global outreach and partnerships to which God has called them. Craig leads churches to develop a global strategy that will lead them to multiple healthy churches in the nations to which God has called them.

Costa Rica // EFCA

tim.navratil@efca.org

Tim and Nancy Navratil have been with ReachGlobal for 9 years, spending 5 years in mainland China, three years in Penang, Malaysia and since Aug 2015 they are stationed in San José, Costa Rica. Tim is a senior leader with the Latin America / Caribbean (LAC) Division of ReachGlobal, the mission arm of the Evangelical Free Church of America. His role is to supervise and coach city team leaders throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. He also sits on the division leadership cabinet to help with division decision making and to set direction for the staff in LAC. Tim is also the division representative in PrayGlobal (strategic prayer initiative) and in the Recruiting Division of ReachGlobal.

Nancy is a registered Nurse and is looking forward to using her skills and experience in a local slum area ministering to Nicaraguan women there. She has to finish a year of language study first. Tim and Nancy will both be working with local ministry to national partners in the Costa Rica area.

Haiti // GVCM

yprophete@aol.com

Yves Prophete is a Co-Founder and current Executive Director of Global Vision Citadelle Ministries, our mission partner in Haiti. Yves has been a supported missionary of Five Oaks since 2005, when we partnered with him and GVCM to build the All God’s Children Orphanage just outside of Mirebalais, Haiti. Today, the orphanage houses 115 orphans, is school to another 250 children and also a place of Christian worship for hundreds of others . Yves recalls when he and Yvon Selin felt the call to serve Haiti,

“We both happened to be in Boston for educational purposes. One Sunday morning, we were together driving back and forth in the greater Boston metropolitan area, searching for a Church to worship the Lord. As we drove together we began to reflect on the political, social, and economic mess of our beloved country. All of a sudden, the understanding of our hearts became enlightened. We discovered deep down that we treasured the same vision. We felt compelled to unite our God given talents in order to win our countrymen for the Lord.”

Austin, TX // Bridges International

rzimmerman@bridgesinternational.com

Russ and Di Zimmerman (former members of Five Oaks) serve full time with Bridges International at the National Office in Austin, TX. They provide leadership development coaching for 300+ Bridges staff, and come alongside student leaders and potential laborers, all in the effort to reach international students with the love and grace of Jesus.

There are over 1 million international students from all over the world studying on college campuses in the United States right now! These students are the brightest and best from their home countries. After they graduate, they will  return home to become top leaders in business, education, government and the military. Bridges International, a ministry of CRU,  is all about reaching these students here and now, sending them home as believers and fully equipped to share the Gospel.