By Claudia Loucks
Geneseo Current
When plans didn’t work out for a mission trip to at Grace United Church in Geneseo, the mission outreach was brought to the church.
Karen Doy, chairman of the Mission Committee at the church explained that each year the church donates money to organizations “near and far. We wanted to be a little more involved with helping others, so we put a notice in the church bulletin and on the Mission Bulletin Board to gather interest for a two-day mission trip to central Illinois.
That idea became more difficult that imagined as people’s schedules would not align with the dates, Doy said.
“Therefore, we decided to bring the mission field to our church,” she said.
Midwest Mission designated Sunday, Sept. 15, as Mission Sunday, providing various opportunities for “reinvigorating our congregation by getting them excited about serving and making a difference around the world and around the corner…This was our opportunity to host an event at our church. We settled on assembling student kits.”
The photo shows the student kit supplies for a recent mission project at Grace United Methodist Church. The supplies were assembled in bags by the congregation. Contributed Photo
At the close of the church service, the Grace church congregation was invited to take part ion the project and directions were provided for building the student kits.
“All of the necessary supplies were purchased ahead of time by the Mission Committee,” Doy explained. “We thought if most people built one kit before leaving church, we would have 100 kits built in no time. We made it a fun time by providing donuts to those who participated.”
The completed kits will be delivered to the Midwest Mission in Pawnee, IL.
Each kit includes three one-subject spiral notebooks, one 12-inch ruler, six unsharpened pencils, one two-inch pencil eraser, one box of 12 colored pencils, one box of 24 crayons, and one pair of scissors. The supplies are contained in individual handmade one-handled bags, made by church member Norma Lodge. The pattern for the bags was supplied by Midwest Mission.