 The One Great Hour of Sharing Offering will be our next opportunity to help people who really need some assistance. The offering will be given on Palm Sunday. We will have readers who will share some examples of people who receive help from One Great Hour of Sharing. Presbyterian Disaster Assistance will receive 32% of the offering, Presbyterian Hunger Program will receive 36%, and Self Development of People will be given 32%.
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Three Mission Updates for February: The “Souper Bowl” offering will be collected on February 2nd after the worship service. Bring either food items or money to be given to Concern For Neighbors food bank in Mountlake Terrace. (update: we raised $94 and over 40 food items!) A total of $1,138 was given to the Christmas Joy offering. Thank-you! Hello and blessing in the New Year from Mzuzu, Malawi. We wanted to thank you for your support of our ministries in Malawi, Africa over the past year and especially lifting up our family after Tyler’s recent bicycle accident. Please continue to pray in the New Year for Tyler’s work in theological education and Rochelle’s work in water and sanitation. Thank you! To follow our weekly family blog please visit: www.holminafrica.blogspot.com  In 1990, Souper Bowl of Caring began with a simple prayer from a single youth group:
“Lord, even as we enjoy the Super Bowl football game, help us be mindful of those without a bowl of soup to eat.” Since then, more than $150 million has been generated for local charities across the country through Souper Bowl of Caring. It has become a powerful movement that transforming the time around the Big Game, into the nation’s largest celebration of giving and serving. Share in God’s love for our neighbors in need and give generously on Super Bowl Sunday. 100% of every dollar or food item collected will go directly to our Souper Bowl of Caring Charity of Choice: The Concern for Neighbors Food Bank in Mountlake Terrace. We will collect this offering after worship on Sunday, Feb. 2. Last year I received a pin marking 20 year of volunteering with the Snohomish County Chapter of the American Red Cross. Our purpose is to help people who are in disaster situations adjust back to normal living routines. We are entirely supported by charitable contributions and receive virtually no government financial assistance, although we do work side by side with several government agencies such as FEMA when there is a disaster. Our chapter has approximately 400 volunteers and 7 paid staff.
Some of our current programs are: Sound The Alarm is a special event held in the Spring around the country at over 100 chosen locations. Here in Snohomish County we are hosting an event on Saturday, April 25 with intentions of installing 400 smoke alarms! If your smoke alarm is over 10 years old you are eligible to receive a new alarm from us with free installation. Call our chapter at 425-252-4103 to sign up for a free alarm or to volunteer to assist with this program. Home Fire Campaign reached a new milestone of 682 lives saved through the campaign. Locally our numbers are impressive. Since July 1, 2019 we have installed 918 alarms and made 296 homes more safe. Since 2014 when the campaign stated we have installed 6982 alarms in Snohomish County. Service to the Armed Forces is one of our longstanding programs where we assist members of any branch of the service with communicating with home by sending emergency messages informing of births, deaths or serious illnesses of loved ones, assisting with travel arrangements or arranging emergency financial assistance. This also includes retirees and department of defense civilians. Our Program Specialist is currently deployed overseas to Kuwait to work with troops in that area. Hero’s Cafe is a relatively new program for veterans who would like to meet monthly with other veterans and share stories and experiences. All veterans from any branch of service are invited to attend. Our next meeting will be at Verdant in Lynnwood at 10 AM on January 28. Disaster Action Response is part of our daily operation where we assist families who are displaced by fires, floods or other natural disasters in finding housing, food, clothing and household item as needed to become restored to their normal condition of operation. We recently opened a shelter for families displaced by a fire. Running totals of DAT responses for 2019 include 108 responses including 287 adults and 93 children displaced and assisted by the Red Cross. Two nurses were deployed to Minneapolis last week to assist in shelters opened to house over 200 people displaced by a large apartment fire. Blood Drives are another recent activity of our chapter. We now sponsor blood drives throughout Snohomish County. To volunteer to contribute email www.redcrossblood.org . Up coming drives are : Thursday, January 23 at Church of Latter Day Saints in Edmonds Wednesday, February 5 at Snohomish County Red Cross, Everett March 24 at Snohomish County Red Cross, Everett If you have any questions or need further information about the Red Cross please contact me. Margaret S. The Christmas Joy Offering is a good way for us to show our thanks for the blessings we have received from God. We will have readers during the first half of December to let us know how the offering is used to help retired and current church workers with unusual medical or housing expenses, to help Presbyterian schools, and to help students of color receive a college education. We will bring our offerings on December 15th. If that date doesn’t work for you, you can still bring your offering another day. Our mission partner, Tyler Holm, needs prayer for continued healing from his bicycle accident. He is currently recovering in South Africa. He is able to have short physical therapy sessions, though is still in a lot of pain. His wife, Rochelle, and 6 year old daughter are in South Africa to be with him. This is a difficult time for them also. It has been made a little easier with support from a local church, for which we are thankful.  Our family this year is a mother and two girls, ages 11 and 12. There is signup sheet in the narthex if you would like to purchase a gift. You can also give money to Ruth Roberts to help purchase a gift. We also provide the family with a gift card for groceries. Please bring everything to the church by Sunday, December 8th.
 We will have the opportunity to contribute to the Christmas Joy Offering in December. Money from this offering is used to help retired church workers with critical housing needs, help church workers with urgent financial and medical needs, provide scholarships at Presbyterian-related schools and help equip people of color to be leaders for ministry. We will have readers in December to give us more information about this offering.
The church will work with the Women’s Association to support a family from YWCA-Pathways for Christmas. We should have information about our family around the middle of November. The winter season is hard on homeless people. Some of our mission money goes to make life a little easier for people facing homelessness. The Everett Gospel Mission, The Salvation Army, Nightwatch, and Vision House are all involved in providing shelter and other needs for people who desperately need help. Habitat for Humanity, Snohomish County helps people who could not become home owners through the normal Real Estate Market. Each family helped puts 500 hours of work into building their new home.  Thank you for bringing in your new white crew socks for Operation Nightwatch and their Sock-tober sock drive! Jim Nickle will deliver them for us. If you have not brought socks, it’s not too late! You can bring them this Sunday, November 3rd.
 Kathy Fladmoe works in the office and checks in clients at Concern for Neighbors Food Bank in Mountlake Terrace. Concern For Neighbors Food Bank is a private, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that collects and distributes food to low income families. The Food Bank currently serves an average of 110+ households per week. It services families in Mount Lake Terrace, Brier, and parts of Lynnwood. Every Tuesday from 9:30A-11:30A Kathy volunteers and gets to know clients on a first name basis. People tell Kathy that Concern for Neighbors is one of the friendliest foodbanks. It makes her feel good to volunteer and treat people with respect and help without making people feel embarrassed. Kathy says “It’s a happy place and I enjoy meeting other people.” While the food bank serves all kinds of individuals Kathy has observed that it is mostly senior populations and those in poverty. As Kathy puts it “food is expensive and they get a variety of healthy food there.” Kathy says that the thing they most could use is someone to speak Russian and interpret for the families and clients that need this service.
If you want to get involved too: concern4neighborsfoodbank@yahoo.com (425) 778-7227 4700 228th St SW, Mountlake Terrace, WA 98043, USA Donations Monday/Tuesday from 8:00AM-1:00PM. Distribution Tuesday 9:30AM-11:30AM October is the month we remember that Nightwatch needs men’s white socks. Cheap socks are fine since they are discarded after use. Clean, dry socks help keep homeless men comfortable during the cold winter months. Bring white socks, crew length or longer, for men during October. Many pairs of socks are needed to last through the cold winter months.
We think of overnight shelter when we think of Nightwatch which is what they do most. Nightwatch also has some low rent apartments for very low income seniors whose lives are made a lot easier by having a safe place to live, A recent issue of Nightwatch News told about receiving a call of gratitude from a formerly homeless woman who had received many nights of shelter through Nightwatch. She is no longer homeless, and now lives in the Midwest. She is active in her church and community, but never forgot the help she received from Nightwatch when she so desperately needed it. |
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