By Donna Crawford
What is Family Missions Day? It’s a monthly mission event with different opportunities each month. Some events will target the kids or youth as the main participants, but many will be for the entire congregation to participate in as a group.
Some months we will stay at Arborlawn, such as our for our first event in September. At that event, we made more than 100 sack lunches for the Union Gospel Mission, made 72 Fall and Christmas crafts to be distributed to our homebound or sick church members, and started work on crocheting plastic grocery bags into sleeping mats for the homeless. We had a HUGE response for the plastic bag collection, which enabled a large group of people, from a 6-year-old to seniors, to work together assembling mats for the homeless.
Some of our events will involve our helping in the community, working with those who are in need of assistance. This will be a great way to open our eyes to all the needs in our own community and show that all of us, no matter our age or talents, can find a way to share God’s love through helping others. While that is extremely important, we will also get the opportunity to meet and work alongside members of Arborlawn we have never had the opportunity to meet. At our first meeting it was so much fun to see the younger kids working and visiting with the adults. As Ben said recently, we find that while we are helping others we are the ones who are blessed and changed.
We are hoping to raise enough money to fund each of these monthly events completely through donations. If you would like to make donations, please note that your donation is for Family Missions Day. At each monthly event we will ask for donations for those able to give, but please never feel if you can’t make the donation you can’t come; we always want you there.
Here are the next two events on our calendar:
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 - ALL CHURCH HOME
We will partner with All Church Home for two different types of programs. One is to provide a home cooked meal for a group of men aged 18-22 who are in a transition home from foster care to independent living. A few adults from our congregation will spend the evening with these men.
We are also going to provide a meal at the women and children’s shelter. This is a group of moms and their kids who were recently living on the streets. They have requested that we only bring 10 high school aged kids to eat with the residents, then play games with and entertain the kids. The first 10 high school kids that contact Donna Crawford will be able to go. We will be leaving the church around 5:00 p.m. and returning around 8:00 p.m.
While this event will not include everyone at the facility, your help in providing food is just as important to all these we will be serving. For the men’s center they stressed providing a home cooked meal would mean everything to them. If you prefer not to cook, we would love a donation to go towards the purchase of the food. The total number of servings needed is listed below, but you can sign up for whatever size serving you would like to provide; it doesn’t need to be the entire amount. Contact Donna Crawford if you want to help.
Here’s what we need:
Meatloaf (for men’s shelter) – to feed 30
Chicken fingers (women/children’s center) – to feed 45
Homemade mashed potatoes – to feed 75
Gravy – to feed 75
Green Beans – to feed 75
Homemade desserts of your choice – to feed 75
Bread – to feed 75
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15 -
WORLD RELIEF THANKSGIVING FESTIVAL
We will be helping with the World Relief Thanksgiving Festival at the World Relief Clubhouse at LaDera Palms Apartments (4500 Campus Drive, Fort Worth, 76119) from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. They need help with their festival where they will serve about 200-300 refugees. This will be open to the entire congregation to provide help with games, a bounce house, crafts, passing out food baskets, and sharing with them about our Thanksgiving traditions.
If any of you can help provide face painting or any other type of special talent for this event, please contact Donna Crawford. We will help set up and clean up afterwards. We need a lot of volunteers of all ages for this event.
Look for a box outside the Family Life Center for where we are seeking donations of the following items: big bags of rice, bags of beans, cans of corn, tomato paste, cumin, turmeric, cardamom, salt and pepper. We will use these items to begin putting together Thanksgiving Food Baskets for this event. The refugees are from all over the world and are not familiar with our traditional Thanksgiving foods, so the World Relief organization puts together baskets of things with which the refugees are more familiar. More lists will follow in November for perishable items.
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