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Purpose of Local Missions
· To share the love of Jesus Christ through service of others in our local community.
Local Outreach Opportunities:
Volunteer Way
For 16 years, Volunteer Way has been a charitable organization helping vulnerable people who are slipping into poverty by supporting local food pantries, soup kitchens, churches, schools, Hospice organizations, residential programs for the mentally challenged, free clinics, as well as other charities within our community.
Salvation Army
Monthly, Hope Church provides volunteers which serve dinner to local participants on an as needed basis. Local missions also transports Hope Church’s food donations to the Salvation Army food bank which is then distributed throughout Pasco County.
Cold Weather Shelter
Located at Impact Church on Congress and Delaware (New Port Richey), the Cold Weather Shelter is opened when the temperature drops to 36°. This shelter provides dinner, overnight accommodations and breakfast, along with a volunteer-led bible study.
Impact Church
Along with hosting the Cold Weather Shelter, Impact Church provides a “clothes closet” from which those in need can select from a wide arrange of donated items.
Joining Hands Kid’s Camp
Each summer, local missions teams up with other area churches to provide a week of fun and meals (breakfast & lunch) for homeless and at-risk children. For 2009, Joining Hands Kids Camp will be held August 3-7.
www.joininghandsmission.org
Summer Feeding Program (children & youth)
Beginning June 8th, the summer feeding program (hosted at Joining Hands Community Missions, formerly Community United Methodist Church) will serve lunch to 200 children each day who qualified for free lunches during the school year.
Experience Bethlehem
Utilizing over 300 volunteers, Hope UMC has provided the community with a living production of the birth of Jesus Christ. While reaching over 3,000 local residents with our production, we raise over 2 tons of donated food each year for local food pantries thus feeding thousands of families.
Support Our Troops
Your local mission team takes an active part in “Support our Troops”, a local organization that ships “care boxes” to our military personnel overseas. Each care package contains the standard needs like personal hygiene items, gum, candy, etc., but they also include special requests like coffee, sunscreen, art and writing supplies for the local children, etc. While donations are solicited by “Support our Troops”, $42.00 in postage is required to ship each box. Hope UMC local missions conducts fundraisers to support the need of postage for this worthwhile organization.
Food Barrel
Local missions provides the congregation the opportunity to bring non-perishable food donations to church with the knowledge that all their donations will be transported to agencies within Pasco County which, in turn, distributes it to those in need.
Coalition for the Homeless of Pasco County, Inc.
Since 1988, the Coalition for the Homeless of Pasco County has assisted the homeless and those at risk of homelessness to gain self-sufficiency by providing advocacy and the coordination of capacity building through partnership within the community. The Coalition is a group of organizations and agencies that have joined forces and share this goal.
Holiday Center
With 2009 being our third year, the Holiday Center provides Christmas for almost 500 Pasco County families by giving them not only food that they need but also providing activities for the children while the parent(s) “shop” for age-appropriate gifts.
Additional local mission resources:
To locate local needs of volunteers and donations within our own community, please click on the link below and you will be connected to “onecommUnity now” (an organization of church leaders who will accomplish the goal of uniting churches to fulfill unmet needs in West Pasco County).
For more information on any opportunity within the local missions organizations, please contact Jean Howell at (727)816-8684 or by e-mailing her at artistjean@aol.com.
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