To share our faith by caring for
the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely
in our church and our community.
This year we contributed food and resources to provide groceries for 80 families a month in our community through the Food Pantry. That is approximately 50,000lbs of food a year. Through our Loads of Love ministry, we provided 100 bags of detergent to these families with enough for each family to do a month’s worth of laundry. That is an average of 2,500 loads. Our backpack food program at Gandy Elementary provided 10 children weekend meals to take home regularly totally around 800lbs of food for the fall semester alone.
Grace Girls provided meals for bereaved families in our congregation and community. We fed over 120 family and friends of deceased oved ones in our church and many more delivered foods when we were unable to host large groups in the family life center. We celebrated the lives of three beloved members of the congregation in the sanctuary that invited over 700 people into our sanctuary to hear the gospel and promise of resurrection. They also had a very successful Mistletoe Market, fed dozens of our community first responders, and provided delicious sides for many people’s Thanksgiving dinners.
Pastor Doug counseled these families, visited them at home, and has called upon them throughout their grief. We sent flowers at Christmas to our widows. We also continued our Blue Christmas service for the community that reflected on those who experienced a lost during the year. Pastor Doug has prayed, called upon, and visited with many members. He has sent messages to over a hundred members through Facebook. Pastor Doug has met with over 104 congregants for prayer, advice, and counseling. More than 60 have come to the Pastor’s office. He has visited 27 member’s homes. Through our Caleb’s Climb ministry, Pastor Doug was able to offer referrals to see mental health counselors at no cost to over 30 people seeking improvement to their mental health.
Our Outreach ministry hosted our annual Trunk R’ Treat. This year it was a drive through where cars drove with water guns ready to spray the trunks and get candy. It was a lot of fun. We had dozens of cars come through nonstop for two hours and gave out more candy than we can even remember.
Last Summer we embarked on a new ministry to help improve the literacy of our neighboring children. Members of our church dedicated six weeks to travel to Watson Chapel and Altheimer Public Libraries to read to children and help them improve as readers. We set a goal to gather 100 books and we collected closer to 600. These books are going to be distributed so that our children can build their own private libraries at home which statistics show is a leading factor in children’s literacy.
Our children’s ministry took a trip to the laundry mat next to the church this summer and paid for each family’s load of laundry.
Through our Holy Healthy ministry, we were able to distribute the Covid-19 vaccine to over 200 people. Then at Christmas time, our Angel Tree ministry provided presents to 17 children in our community who otherwise would have struggled to provide last year.
We will be offering grants through Caleb’s Climb to our local school guidance counselors to help them provide resources to their students that will improve their mental health. We give $1,750 to our area school guidance counselors to provide materials to help our student’s mental health!
We are working on creating a new Older Adult ministry that will ensure we are fulfilling our mission to take care of the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely. This will be a ministry that focuses on the needs of our older members and ensuring they are being cared for through visitations, cards, flowers, groceries, medications, rides to appointments, praying for and with them, and making sure they are growing in closer to Jesus!
Through extra funds given last year by generous members like you we have been able to create a new Financial Planning fund for anyone in our church who needs discipled in being a better steward of the money God has given them. For our members 18 years old and older, we will provide financial planning resources at no cost. Everyone is welcome to start by talking to Pastor Doug who can provide resources to Crown Financial who offers budget coaches, debt analysis, and online courses to help teach good stewardship habits, or provide resources to Financial Peace University which offers online courses on how to manage money and get out of debt.