Vol 5 No 7 - Mission Recap

Wow.

Once again, you have answered the call to be God's faithful people in assisting others in a time of desperation.  Last week's Mid-Week Message put out the word about how United Methodists can help answer the call to assist in the relief efforts in Haiti, specifically through a special offering we would be taking Sunday for UMCOR's work in Haiti.  Later last week, you heard about the opportunity to participate in the assembling of health kits during Sunday School last week.  You also were reminded of how through our regular bi-weekly mission to Sager-Brown we can help process and ship kits that have come in from across the connectional church.

Well, here are the numbers, so far:

1) We assembled 245 kits through the supplies provided for the Sunday morning effort, not including those kits brought in already completed by others in our congregation.

2) We have seen over $2,000 raised in last week's Haiti Advance offering and other donations that have come in to help provide even more health kit supplies.

3) Through our regular UMCOR mission yesterday, we assembled or verified for shipping over 500 additional kits to go to Haiti.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's over 750 people in Haiti who will eventually be holding and using supplies handled and prepared by you, not including the use of the funds by our missionaries on the ground there to impact even more lives.

On a similar note, part of my responsibility as your pastor is to prepare annual reports on a number of areas of ministry to submit to our district and conference.  I am pleased to announce that through communion offerings and other generous donations, we went through almost $5000 in our helping hands fund, all of which is used to help the needy here in Morgan City.

I could go on and on about the faithfulness of you all to answer the missional call (for this is just scratching the surface), but let me say that reflecting on this past week's efforts for Haiti (and those of you who were unable to attend last week's service will have the opportunity to contribute to the Haiti Advance this week) and looking at our helping hands support this past year (which was a record, increasing from last year by over 20%), I could not be more proud or pleased to be your pastor.

Let's keep up the good work.  There is a world who needs to hear about and receive God's grace - and you have impacted so many lives already.  Let's see how many more we can impact in 2010.

See you Sunday!

Lamar