Mission of The Month for September
Crop Hunger Walk
We often forget that church missions, like the Parker Crop Hunger Walk, are about much more than just getting people more food. They empower communities with sustainable clean water, provide water resources to grow crops, and support nutrition and land rights education. It is even more important to remember that church missions are also ministries of little things, little things and fingerprints that change lives and endure forever.
In a recent Sunday sermon, Randy offered an example of “fingerprints and little things.” He described a 4-hour mission he and several other pastors made to an orphanage in Romania where forty babies were housed in individual cribs lining the walls of a large, unheated room. Nurses infrequently monitored the room and offered little individual care and attention. There was only silence. During that four-hour visit, not one of the forty babies cried. Not even once. There was no reason for them to cry. No one ever responded. They had already learned that no one cared. The babies only knew hopelessness. During their 4-hour mission, the visitors, if only for a short while, lovingly held each baby in their arms and talked to them.
Little things done and fingerprints left in God’s name are anything but meager or trivial. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
Little things are not forgotten. Our fingerprints don’t disappear from the lives we touch. Recently, Helen Bridge, one of those great teachers at a California community college, has always been on a mission of little things and finger- prints. She received a painstakingly written note from an unremarkable immigrant student whom she had taught in the early 1990’s. Among other things, the note said, “You listened when no one else heard. Please don’t forget me, I’ll never forget you. For the rest of your life, you have a friend.” It’s the same with Church World Services, an interfaith church foundation that supports the Crop Walk and other hunger-fighting events. The Church World Service foundation is remembered today in estate wills of Europeans who were “touched” by the foundation almost 70 years ago after World War II.
Help our church fight world hunger, one step at a time. Please block out 8:00 to 11:00am, Saturday, September 14th, on your calendar for the Parker Crop Hunger Walk. Instead of setting a daunting donation goal, this Parker UMC walk mission aims to have 50 PUMC walkers join the Parker Methodist team. Fingerprints and little things will surely follow.
For more information, about the Parker Crop Walk, go online to: www.cropwalkonline.org/parkerco
David Butler, the Parker UMC Walk team leader, will also be available to answer your questions. He will be at the Narthex information desk for all three Sunday services starting August 25.
For information about the 1,600 other U.S. community Crop Hunger Walks sponsored by Church World Services, visit:
www.cropwalk.org
There is no medicine such as hope, love, and faith, no incentive so great and no tonic so powerful as the expectation of something better tomorrow.
-Orison Marden, 1850-1924, medical doctor and spiritual author