From David Howell:

On Saturday April 10 En Fuego Mission (On Fire For God and Neighbors) sent teams out for service projects.  One team of thirteen went to Helen Raub’s to provide yard maintenance and clean up.  We had an awesome team of adults and youth that turned her yard from an “over grown jungle” to a very nice trimmed yard.  Ms Helen and her daughter Margaret were touched by our efforts & kept saying how appreciative they were.  We all not only worked hard but also had a great time at it!  Most of our team did not know each other very well before hand but were a solid bonded team by the end of our workday.  As always, we found it rewarding serving others in need and we all came away a changed!  We heard comments from the youth about doing this “every week” for the rest of the summer.....yes from the youth!   God as always was at work, changing us…..as we serve others.  


Photos!

Sager-Brown Depot

On Saturday, March 27, seven St. Andrew's UMC folks met in Baldwin, La. with some of our brothers and sisters from Faithful UMC in Ascension Parish to work at Sager-Brown Depot. Sager-Brown is a distribution center for UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief. United Methodists from all over the world collect supplies for disaster relief, including Bedding Kits, School Kits, Cleaning Buckets, and several other relief kits.

Today we were packing Health Kits, with soap, washcloths, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and a few other health and hygiene items. The Depot has collected nearly a half-million kits since the Haiti earthquake and all of them go through one of two depots: one in Salt Lake City, UT and one at Sager Brown!

We assembled REALLY large double-corrugated packing boxes (you can see one in the first picture, almost as high as Carol's waist). We packed them all with kits that had been shipped from all over the country,  used hand-carts to move the big boxes so that they'd be ready for Monday's volunteers to start inspecting the kits, and we flattened and stacked up the odd-shaped boxes that the kits were shipped in originally. Some people had really had fun with their boxes! You can see one of them in the second photo.

One of our favorite times was about a half hour before we were to leave when Carol found a stack of handmade cards from some children here in the US to the children of Haiti. It broke our hearts that the cards can't be sent to Haiti (has to do with customs and our ability to guarantee exactly what's in the boxes) but we all wanted to find the kids and give them hugs. My favorite said something like, "Dear Haiti, I've never had an earthquake. I hope your state gets well soon." We have no idea where the cards came from, but I was really proud that our church encourages children to think about missions that early!

The adults from our church were Carol Miller, Mark Musick, and Marty Ducote. We were all soooooo impressed with our teenagers: Andrew, Blake, Katherine, and Elizabeth. They didn't slow down all day long! So if any of their mamas are reading, put them to work. They're pretty good at it.

More photos:

Elizabeth and Katherine loading up the boxes

Mark and Andrew do the heavy box-making.

Blake, Andrew, Elizabeth, and Katherine. What a great bunch of kids!