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Cathy Griner, 2008 Chairperson
The Missions and Outreach Committee’s focus is on reaching out from the church into the community to help those in need. As we move into 2008, the committee’s ministries include Saints for Santa, the Food Pantry, Divine Tilth, Table of Grace, Meals on Wheels, Diaper and Formula Kits, and mission trips.
The full committee meets on the last Wednesday every other month at 7 PM. To get in touch with the contact person listed for a ministry below, please call the church at 365-6266.
Saints for Santa
標HAT IT IS: Saints for Santa is a toy store for parents in need of assistance at Christmas. Shopping is by invitation only, and distribution of the invitations is handled by the Social Services office in Zebulon. Parents purchase items at 25% of their retail value and can have them wrapped on site at no cost. Child care is provided while parents shop. Proceeds from the toy sale are used to fund the Diaper and Forumula Kits ministry (see below).
菱OW YOU CAN HELP: Donate new toys, wrapping paper, bows, gift tags, and tape. Be a toy shopper, using money provided by the committee. Help price items and set “the store” up. Help people as they shop. Wrap packages. Watch children while their parents shop.
標HO TO CONTACT: Carol Gates or Cindy Hamrick
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The Food Pantry
標HAT IT IS: Located in the church basement next to the youth room, the Food Pantry provides a three-day emergency supply of food to families in need who live in Wendell. We also work with the Social Services office at the Eastern Regional Center in Zebulon and will help any family referred to us by them, regardless of where they live.
We are a partner agency of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC, which means we can shop at their warehouse and get many items free or at a shared maintenance fee of just $.18 per pound. The pantry is open Tuesdays from 5-7 PM, Thursdays from 9-10:30 AM, and the last Saturday of the month from 10AM-noon. Check us out at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WendellUMC_Food_Pantry/
HOW YOU CAN HELP: Be a food pantry volunteer! Volunteers work in pairs, doing the required paperwork and bagging up groceries for families. We’d like to expand our hours, but first we need more people willing to be trained and commit to a time slot each month. Organize a food drive where you work or in the community at large. Save and bring us your paper (not plastic) grocery store bags with handles, like Lowes Foods uses.
The first Sunday of each month is Food Pantry Sunday, and while donations are certainly welcome at ANY time, the congregation is specially encouraged on this day each month to bring in food … or … to donate money or grocery store gift cards and let us do the shopping. There is a list of needed food items posted on the pantry door.
(NOTE: If you put a check in the offering plate made out to WUMC and in the lower left corner specify “food pantry”, the amount will be recorded on your annual church giving record and the money used to purchase food for the pantry. Money you spend on gift cards does not “go through the church bank accounts” and therefore is not recorded on your giving record).
標HO TO CONTACT: Debbie Merritt
Divine Tilth
標HAT IT IS: Divine Tilth is a gardening ministry that grows organic fruits and vegetables to supplement the Food Pantry and the Table of Grace (see below). Also, when there is more produce than can be distributed by those means, the excess is put on a table in the church breezeway on Sunday mornings for the congregation and the community at large to help themselves to at no cost. (At the request of some church members, a donation box was added to the table for those who wanted to contribute something for what they were taking, but this produce is free to everyone.)
The majority of the produce is grown at two locations—an established garden at the Merritt’s and a new garden that was added to the parsonage grounds in 2006. Some produce, not necessarily grown organically, is also brought in by church members from their own gardens.
菱OW YOU CAN HELP: Help in one of the Divine Tilth gardens—preparing the soil, planting, weeding, picking. If you have a suitable plot for a garden and would like help developing it to support this ministry, please let us know.
標HO TO CONTACT: Scott Merritt
Table of Grace
標HAT IT IS: Faith, food, fellowship and fun! The Table of Grace is a free community dinner held in the Fellowship Hall at 6 PM on the last Monday of each month. There is music during the meal, and singing and a short devotional after the meal. Produce from the Divine Tilth gardens is frequently used in the meals, and during the growing season produce is put out on tables for our guests to take home with them.
Families that use our Food Pantry are sent quarterly invitations to the dinner as a reminder, but no invitation is needed—the doors are open to all. We encourage members of the congregation who attend to sit with our guests, make them feel comfortable, and get to know them.
菱OW YOU CAN HELP: Find out what the menu for the month is and, depending on what is needed, bring food or help prepare it. Come early and help set things up. Serve food or drinks. Circulate during the meal and keep people’s cups filled. Clear empty plates from the tables as people finish eating. Share your musical talents by offering to sing and/or play a song or two. Help clean up afterwards.
標HO TO CONTACT: Marjorie Hill
Meals on Wheels
標HAT IT IS: Meals on Wheels of Wake County provides hot, nutritious lunches to the homebound elderly and persons with disabilities via volunteer drivers five days a week, Monday through Friday. Our church covers one route, picking up the prepared meals at the East Wake Senior Center in Wendell and delivering them to the homes.
菱OW YOU CAN HELP: Make a commitment to pair up with someone and deliver meals a certain day each month. Routes typically take an hour to complete. Not only are you delivering food, you are providing perhaps the only social interaction a person will have on a given day, and you are checking up on their well-being as well.
標HO TO CONTACT: Henry Mazzeo
Diaper and Formula Kits
標HAT IT IS: The proceeds from the Saints for Santa toy sale fund this ministry. A packet of diapers and formula is provided to each new infant who is seen at the Well Baby Clinic at the Eastern Regional Center. Our committee shops for diapers, formula, wipes and other small items and assembles the “kits,” complete with a label printed with the words to “Jesus Loves Me” or “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” Kits are delivered to the clinic to be given to all newborn patients.
菱OW YOU CAN HELP: Sign up to shop for supplies, assemble kits, or deliver them to the Eastern Regional Center in Zebulon.
標HO TO CONTACT: Cindy Hamrick
Mission Trips
標HAT IT IS: Mission trips can involve sending organized work teams out for anything from a day trip to help an indigent elderly person with home repairs to extended trips to help rebuild entire communities after natural disasters. Wendell UMC has an ongoing relationship with Heritage UMC in D’Iberville MS, sending work teams to help them restore the Gulf Coast area’s catastrophic damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We also have given financial support to mission trips organized by our youth groups.
菱OW YOU CAN HELP: When a work team is being organized, sign up and go. If you are willing to help, there will be something that you can do.
標HO TO CONTACT: Ellen McCubbin
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