April Meeting Minutes

Mission Minutes

April 23, 2012

Chris opened with a devotion from  "When Helping Hurts" She will lead devotions for the next few months.  This book will be very good in guiding our Mission Team in our work. Some of the questions asked were, "Have you ever helped the poor? Have you ever harmed the poor"  She will mail us some questions to ponder for the next meeting.

Gary then led us in prayer.

Haiti: Mary Louise reported that $2,000 has been sent to Haiti for the hospital.  She has been working with Dr. Clair Chappooiux. For now we would like to focus on helping the hospital. Their goal is to be an inpatient hospital. HANDS has donated $100 for this mission. We will be purchasing vitamins with the monies.  We will purchase vitamins with iron and antiacid medicines.We talked about how we can build a relaitonship with them.  We'd like to send an information gathering group of 4 early next year. It would be good if we could send 2 medical people, 1 technology oriented person and 1 construction person.We will look into who we can send as ambassadors. Each person should have an alternate. This will give us several months to prepare.

Mission Trip: The Barbeque was a success.  We will probably need another fund raiser. Gary would like to do a chicken dinner like we did last year. he will check with Bill and Kathi Roberts to see if they will head it, possibly in May.

There is a possibility of going to the Navajo Nation for our next Year's Mission Trip. Mary Louise said that one of their former churches, Bethlehem, worked with them. Gary will gather more information on this in the coming months.

Bible Stix: Chris is working on this. She has asked Mary L. if she would like to help.   Chris will get something in the bulletin to open it to the congregation to help in purchasing these.

Blood Drive: The blood drive is scheduled for Tuesday, May 15th from 3:30 to 7:30.

Ann will be helping Pat for the first hour. Lynn Lerch will be helping after that.  If anyone else would like to help for awhile, it would be appreciated.

Soup Kitchen:  Kelly said their Sunday small group served this month.  There were more people there than she has seen in the past. There are still 2 months that haven't been signed up for, June and September.

Homeless Shelter:  Alan has been in contact with them and they have a great need right now for meat and shampoo.  We can help supply that, we will work on finding a group, possibly a Sunday School class, to do the shopping and deliver it.

Elderly Outreach:  Karen reported that She and Brigitte have 3 or 4 people who have been assigned to people that need help. Right now we have limited it to church members but we may open it to people in the community. Karen is also working on the Caregivers support group.

Garden: So far we have had only 1 request for a plot from Tim Hindes. Eric made up and passed out some very nice brochures advrertising it. We may have some more response by May 1st.

Missionaries:  If we are following Bobby's blog we see there is more unrest in the Sudan and his work load is very heavy. They are bombing oil fields and live in very poor conditions. We continure to pray for him.

TiLissa will be leaving May 20th for her Mission Trip to Africa.

HANDS: Pat reported that HANDS voted to send $100 each to the Haiti project, Bobby's Ministry in Sudan and to TiLissa for her Aftrica trip.

Compassion International Sunday: Chris would like to sponsor a Sunday to promote this ministry, possibly she can pick a Sunday in September.

Mission Team Open House:  Ashley Burris, a member of the congregation would like to designate a time where she could sell Mary Kay Products and she would donate 25% of her profit to Missions. We discussed that if we do this for her we must open it to others in the congregation. Not sure what we will call it yet but we are discussing having a time where people in the congregation can set up a station where they will sell their products, such as jewelry, Mary Kay, Tastefully Simple, Pampered Chef etc. They in turn will donate 25% of profit to Missions.

Star Fish Project:  Mary Louise talked a little about this Ministry that is trying to abolish the sex slave trade.  She and Lynn Lerch are making jewelry to sell. Also is there a possibility of one of the Sunday School classes having a bake sale and giving the proceeds to this Ministry?  We will discuss it more at our upcoming meetings.

Our next meeting is scheduled for May 21st, however we want to change it as the Prayer conference will be going on at that time.  We decided to try to meet on May 28th, which is Memorial Day. We will propose this date to Ann.

Thanks Gary for conducting the meeting.

We closed with the "Lord's Prayer".

Respectfully submitted,

Pat Schell