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Summer Mission Trip (July 31-August 3, 2008)
Our 4th annual summer mission trip to the mountains of West Virginia is less than 2 months away. We?ll be going back to Gary, WV July 31-August 3 to support the mission efforts of School For Life. Church members and friends are invited to join us. We had 42 volunteers last year and are hoping to take at least 50 this year.
We?ll be visiting shut-ins & nursing homes. We?ll also be doing home repairs, continuing to build on the prom dress drive that Jen Johnson started in 2007 and working on various projects at the school itself. Lastly, we?ll be hosting a Saturday community movie/dessert night.
The cost of the trip is $60 for all church members and $50 for each subsequent family member. For non-church members, the cost is $100. Scholarships are available, so please don?t let the cost keep anyone from going. A deposit of $20 will be collected on July 13. The balance will be collected the week before the trip. Please make all checks out to the church (for the mission trip). A trip handout is available on the mission trip bulletin board. It offers more details about the trip.
As always, thank you for supporting our ongoing mission efforts in McDowell County, West Virginia. Our congregation is making a difference in this area in need. We are building friendships, painting houses, fixing leaky roofs, doing home repairs, visiting nursing homes & neighborhoods, donating Christmas gifts and donating items to be sold in the thrift store. Most importantly, we are helping to spread God?s love and grace in this community. Please consider joining us on our 4th annual mission trip. Young, middle, and senior aged volunteers are all needed. Our congregation is truly blessed for this opportunity to do God?s work in this beautiful area of the country that some refer to as being forgotten. For more information about School For Life, log onto their website at www.schoolforlifeinc.com.
Grace & Peace,
Mission?s Committee
Teddy Bears Needed For Summer Mission Trip 2008
We?ll have groups going to visit shut-ins and nursing homes during our mission trip to Gary, WV. Last year, we handed out 97 teddy bears during our visits in Gary. Our missionaries were blown away by the smiles those teddy bears helped bring to the faces of so many adults and children. Each teddy bear had a tag that offered caring wishes from our congregation. This year, our goal is to collect more than 100 bears to take on our trip (new or gently used). There will be a box under the mission?s bulletin board where bears can be dropped off until the end of July. The Matthews Help Center?s thrift store is a great place to buy a bear to donate. Thanks for your support of this collection.
ANNUAL SUMMER MISSION TRIP 2007
August 2-5
McDowell County, WV
Our Missionaries Return from Gary, WV
Early on August 2nd 2007, people began to gather in the parking lot of our little church in Matthews. Rest assured, there was nothing little about what they accomplished over the next 4 days. By 8:30am, they loaded up and headed North up I-77, bound for Gary, WV. This marked the third year that MPC has sent a delegation into some of the poorest areas of the country to work on home repairs, visit with the forgotten ones, and share God?s love. This year?s trip included an energetic delegation of 8 nursing students from the Queens College nursing program and six of their family members, who chose to participate in this mission trip as a class service project. All in all, 44 people participated in this year?s mission trip.
The trip was an overwhelming success, though not without its share of challenges. For starters, the weather was a bit hotter than usual for this time of year. The home repair work was just plain harder than previous years. The wasps seemed to be a little ?friskier.? And while we were glad to have so many people on this year?s trip, it also means we had a lot more people to feed, transport, and coordinate than in previous trips. Nonetheless, there is no question that God was present there with us, every minute of every day. The fact that everyone had to reach back, push themselves out of their comfort zone and find a gear that they may not have known they had, just made it all the more rewarding. Clearly, with God, all things are possible.
Though we were only in Gary for about three days, we really accomplished a lot:
1) Home Repairs: We tarred the roof of Sue and Harvey, an elderly retired couple.
Sue is battling Stage IV cancer. We also painted two other homes and repaired an unsafe front porch.
2) Visitation: We made several visits to the McDowell County Nursing Facility, home to about 115 residents. There we made many new friends, played some bingo, and had a good old fashioned hymn sing with our guitars. We also gave away nearly 100 teddy bears dontated by MPC church members.
3) Wellness Picnic: In addition to painting and visiting shut-ins, our nursing students were busy training local residents how to take blood pressure readings (with brand new equipment that they donated to the community). They also gave free blood pressure screenings to the community during a free picnic on Saturday evening, featuring BBQ
and beans donated by the Men of the Church and Jack Fultz?s ?secret
recipe? baby back ribs.
4) Prom Dress Drive: One of our fantastic MPC youth organized the collection approximately thirty prom dresses, and donated them to the School for Life. These dresses will eventually be distributed to teen girls in Gary, WV to wear to their prom.
5) Daily Devotions: Our group met twice a day for prayer, reflection, discussion and song.
We are happy to report that our ongoing relationship with the School for Life and with Jack and Brenda Fultz continues to flourish. Jack and Brenda are wonderful, interesting and loving people who are really making a difference in this poverty stricken region. They have an amazing way bring people in need together to accomplish so much with so little, all the while sharing the Good News. Our relationship has grown to include gifts for needy families during the Christmas season, the summer mission trip, and donations of more than one hundred used computers as well as other miscellaneous items for their newly formed thrift store.
There were a lot of heros on this trip. Everyone that went is a hero in my book. Without question, many of the people we met in Gary are heroes. I think that everyone that gave up their vacation days, their comfortable beds and their air conditioned homes to be a part of this trip, took something away from it that they just couldn?t find anywhere else but in the forgotten hills of West Virginia. Something about themselves. Something about humankind. Something about their Faith. Through it all, we grew together as a group, and we grew individually in ways we could not have imagined when we met in that parking lot on August 2nd.
Mark your calendars now to be a part of this incredible, life-changing journey in 2008.
Mission's Chair,
Howie Webb
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