LAKELAND — Encounter with Christ in Latin America and the Caribbean has been approved as a fund within the Florida United Methodist Foundation, according to Dorothy J. Collins, the Encounter’s Florida Conference representative.

The initiative is a mission project of the denomination’s General Board of Global Ministries that focuses on evangelization and new church development; ministries with women, children and youth; and comprehensive community health care. It’s being done in cooperation with the Council of Evangelical Methodist Churches in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Rev. Tom Marston, Florida Conference treasurer and executive director of the Foundation, said the Foundation can now receive and manage donations on behalf of the Encounter and distribute funds to the project.

Martson says gifts to Encounter are tax-deductible and can be made in two ways—as permanent gifts, which stay in the fund and only the earnings are distributed to the ministry, or as gifts that are immediately distributed to the ministry.