A Great Week for a Food Drive!

This was a great day for our food pantry. Skaith school finished up their week long drive, bringing in over 600 items. The youth who coordinated this event deserve a big THANK YOU!

In addition, Heartland Comprehensive Family Care Center held a 3-day drive and filled a truck and an SUV with approximately 3,000 items! Thank you to everyone who helped make this event a success, and congratulations to Dr. Wiederholt's team for winning the friendly competition!

The generosity of our community never ceases to amaze me. The thing that sets InterServ apart is its partnership with the faith community. People meet God in their interaction with the poor and vulnerable. Seek justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God!

Rethinking Church & Putting Love into Action

This weekend, churches in St. Joseph, Missouri are putting their love into action by helping InterServ and Community Missions with projects that will help benefit programs that help people to live their lives more fully and more capably.

On Saturday, United Methodists will gather at the Community Missions campus (Juda House and Haven) and build a storage structure and a shaded area for InterServ and its related organization, Community Missions. Another group of Methodists will bring a sack lunch for those who will be working on the construction projects. Still another group of Methodists will bring truckloads full of paper and hygiene items to be distributed through InterServ and Community Missions. Across town, an ecumenical group of church goers will gather at First Christian church for morning reflections about poverty as part of a "Journey to Justice" experience. Participants will then go to one of eleven different work sites to hear first-hand accounts of how lives have been changed by the agencies working to fight poverty in St. Joseph. Finally, InterServ staff and volunteers will work to move items for a family affected by the recent flooding as another act of sharing God's love with people in need.

On Sunday, still more Methodist church members will help out by replacing house numbers on the homes of some of the people who receive Mobile Meals. At 4:00 p.m. InterServ's Retired and Senior Volunteer Program will honor volunteers with an appreciation event at the Firefighter's Hall on A Highway. Our oldest volunteer is 102 years old and the person with the most lifetime volunteer hours has volunteered over 12,000 hours of service!

I am proud to be part of this wonderful organization and to see how people from faith communities all over the city are putting their love into action - not just this weekend, but every day. God's love is truly amazing.

Putting Love in Action

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth." 1 John 3:16-18

How do we love with actions and in truth? Just a sampling of the projects for Sept: On Sat. Sept. 10th the Ecumenical Community Empowerment Committee will sponsor a Journey for Justice event. It begins at First Christian Church (927 Faraon St. - St. Joseph, MO) at 9 a.m. participants will hear reflections and meditations regarding poverty, and then go out to one of 11 mission sites where they will hear first hand accounts of clients who have been helped in their struggle against the affects of poverty. Both InterServ (Youth Services) and Community Missions (Juda House & Haven) will serve as work sites. Also on Sept. 10th, United Methodists will work on a project for InterServ and Community Missions as part of Serve 2011, a conference-wide service initiative by the Missouri United Methodist Church. On Sunday, Sept. 25, churches will participate in the CROP Walk which supports Church World Service globally and Open Door Food Kitchen and InterServ Mobile Meals locally. Also on Sept. 25th, churches will do service as part of St. Joe Serve, an annual community-wide service event of St. Joe churches.

People are putting their love into action by living out the gospel message of hope and healing.