Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Widsom Wednesday: Kits for Conference

Grace and peace to you, I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, May 15, 2024. I am standing in our sanctuary which will be the site of Peakland Preschools graduation ceremony tomorrow. I have in front of me some of the items the Peakland congregation is collecting to make two kinds of kits through the end of the month. As we did last year, Peakland is creating hygiene kits and menstrual kits. Our kits will join the ones that other Virginia United Methodist churches are putting together for our Virginia United Methodist Annual Conference gathering in June. Last year, Peakland created almost 200 kits. This year we want to create 125 hygiene kits and 125 menstrual kits and here are the ways we’re going to do that. You’ll find on our website PeaklandUMC.org a list of all the items needed for each type of kit and how to pack them up. We have a printed list of all the items needed available on Sunday mornings. Pay attention to the size requirements. You and your household can put together a complete kit or two or three or four kits. Bring your completed kit to Peakland anytime through Sunday, June 2. We have also created an Amazon.com wish list which has the exact items we need to make dozens of kits. You can have the items delivered directly to the church. I emailed that link to our church folks this past Monday. If you didn’t receive my email, contact Kim in the church office at PeaklandOffice@gmail.com to get the wish list link and to receive our emails about Peakland church life. If you’d like to make a financial contribution, that would be welcome too. You can give through our website specifically for the kits. Once we have all the kits that you make and the items from our wish list, then we’ll gather on Sunday, June 9 at Peakland at 3:30 to have a kit packing party. We’ll double check the kits you bring in and assemble all our bulk items into the remaining kits. The Virginia Annual Conference churches have been collecting these kits for conference for years now. Each year we United Methodists make thousands of kits. All of these kits then go to UMCOR, our denomination’s relief agency. UMCOR will receive them and then distribute them to folks and communities in the US who need them. Last year we did about 200 kits. This year, can we do 250 kits in total.? I know we can! As always, come worship here at Peakland either in person on Sundays at 8:30, 9:45 and 11:00 or join us online for the 11:00 a.m. Sunday worship. All are welcome. If you’d like to know more about life here at Peakland and finding your place here, reach out to me at PeaklandPastor@gmail.com Thanks be to God!