Mission Minutes-7/15/07

Missions Meeting, July 15, 2007

Present: Alyson Beucler, Sheila Burris, Diane Lancour, Pastor Newhouse, Mary Rees Freeman, and Sandy Kaptain

1. The Heifer Project was discussed. We need to try to raise the rest of the money by the mission

meeting in September. At the present time we have $2973 collected and we need $5000 to buy an Arc. Mary is going to talk about this in both services. I was agreed that we need to do the set up that Pastor Newhouse did before. This was very successful and drew a lot of attention. It was also suggested that we make a graph (for a visual) to show how close we are to meeting our goal. It was decided that we would spend the money at the end of September. a. during the week (before I got the notes typed) The Sunday School turned in almost $900 for this project. We are getting close.

2. Sheila talked about the mission statement:

"Our mission is to be a living expression of the life and love of Jesus Christ by caring, sharing, and reaching out to others through God's grace"

3. Habitat for Humanity: It was brought to our attention That Habitat runs a store, which sells hardware, and the money is donated to fund their building projects. The store is on route 31, close to Big Timber road. They are in need of volunteers for building and to run the store.

You can also donate supplies to their organization. Diane is going to put this information in the newsletter. We need to work on getting volunteers for this program.

4. Rainbow Covenant:

January- April (local) - PADS, Soup Lettle, Food Pantry, Crisis Center, Habitat, etc.

May- August - the focus is on Children- Ideas child serve, Marcy Newberry, etc.

September- December- (focus is on outreach) AIDS in Africa, Metropolitan Mission Distribution Center, etc. Discussion centered upon the concept that more information needs to be given on the various projects. No one knows how much money was collected or how the money was used. Diane is going to put together a flyer with this information. It was suggested that we have another meeting to just organize Rainbow.

5. PADS: PADS has an open house on Friday to show people their new home. There is a $30 (single) and $50 (couple) donation to be used to buy washer and dryers. Mary, Alyson, and Pastor Newhouse will be going. This is a permanent facility.

Thomas the Train - volunteers are needed on August 17, 18, 19, 25, and 26th. Volunteers may work from 9-5 or 10-6. Money that would be paid as wages is donated to the PADS program. This is at the Railway Museum in Union, Illinois. They hope to get 20 volunteers per day. Doris

(secretary for the PADS program) said that they made almost $9000 on this program last year. Lunch is provided for the volunteers and there are several jobs to choose from including: ticket sales, admission gate, the store (replace inventory), storytelling, tattoos, crossing guards,

line attendant, photo line attendant-with Thomas, assistant car hosts, etc. See Alyson for more details. It was decided that we should do a call list to see if we could get several volunteers. This might be a good project for the youth group also.

6. Meals on Wheels is set for the end of August. We don't need any more volunteers for this month.

7. There is $300 in the Mission budget. $50 was voted on to send Pastor Newhouse and his wife to the PADS reception.

The next mission meeting is August 19th between services.

Notes by Alyson