The month of May ended with the general fund $38,897 short of the amount needed to pay all of our missionaries 100 percent of the target allowance. We used $20,860 from the estate fund to supplement allowances. Sixteen of our missionary units received 100 percent of the target amount, while twenty-nine missionary units received 65 percent. There were five other units that fell between the two extremes. At the moment the estate fund holds a balance of $23,188.
Allowances are just a bit over half of the total amount needed to field a missionary family. In May we had 50 full-time missionary units serving. The fielding cost for all of our missionaries combined last month was just over $150,000. The left side of the table below breaks down the total fielding cost into different categories.
| May 2009 Fielding Costs | ||||
| Housing | 5,838 | |||
| Other | 11,313 | |||
| Health Costs | 47,053 | |||
| Allowance | 86,301 | |||
| Total | 150,505 | |||
| May 2009 Support Sources | |
| Designated Support Funds | 86,496 |
| General Fund | 23,817 |
| General Missionary Support Fund | 1,295 |
| Estate Fund | 20,861 |
| Total | 132,468 |
* The difference of $18,036 is the amount that allowances were shorted in May
Of that $150,000 needed to field our missionaries $86,500 came from designated support funds. All of the sources used to support our missionaries are listed on the right side of the table above. The total of the support sources was a little more than $18,000 short of the total needed. WMPL pays fixed costs such as health insurance premiums, housing, pension, etc before allowances are paid. For that reason the roughly $18,000 that we were short last month was taken from allowances.
I hope that this chart is a helpful way of looking at how our missionaries are supported and how support funds are spent. One need that becomes evident after looking at these tables is the need for our missionaries to have more partners who support individual missionary both financially and with prayers. While I am very grateful for the large number of partners who contribute to the mission as a whole by contributing to the general fund, I believe there is an additional need for a greater number of partners to team up with a particular missionary family. Please pray that God would inspire more partners to team up with our under supported missionaries. An increase in prayer support as well as designated support fund contributions would be a tremendous blessing. As designated support funds donations increase the general funds and estate funds that we already receive will be freed up for other uses. That I believe is a great goal to aim for.
In addition to using $23,800 from the general fund to support our missionaries we also used $10,100 for other administrative costs such as postage, utilities and miscellaneous repairs on our properties. In all, donations to our general fund in May equaled $34,078. As of the middle of the month of June we have already received $31,705 in donations to our general fund which is the highest total since February. Thank you for your continued partnership with this ministry.