December 2022 Genesis UMC Missions News
Kingswood
We have all 25 of our Kingswood teachers adopted and they have been receiving notes and love from our 25 sponsor families. Patsy Saxon, our Kingswood birthday fairy, has been sending in a special treat to all of the staff on their birthday months. She is also loving on our Genesis Preschool teachers by honoring their birthdays as well.
Our Kingswood Christmas Shop was a huge success! It showed us just how amazing it is to do ministry in this new space we have. We had 42 families come and shop. Kelly, the receptionist at Kingswood who is our direct partner in all of this chaos, shopped for two more.
We provided 2 toys per child and a new outfit of clothes. We had a grab bag area that included stocking stuffers and some coats, hats and gloves that parents could shop from. The church also gave each family a candle, with a poem written by our Prayer ministry in English and Spanish, that had a $25 gift card to Food Lion as a Christmas gift from Genesis.
Families waited in our Koinonia space while our wrappers packaged their gifts and enjoyed hot cocoa and cookies. Any children who came also had an area to do some Christmas crafts while they waited. We heard many comments about how beautiful our space was, how kindly they were received and how much they appreciated the opportunity. Several parents hung around after their gifts were ready to enjoy some peace and quiet here before heading back home!
We had 30 of our Genesis family helping in various ways at the shop and we had over 50 families who donated toys and gift cards. It was a wonderful two weekends and we want to thank Natalie Wilhelm for taking this on as her Gold Award last year and getting us started on this new mission venture!
Alexis
Back in November 2021 this church generously donated over $20,000 to a local family with a son suffering with sickle cell and needing a bone marrow transplant. We knew about this family because of our relationship with Kingswood. Alexis is now back in school and the family was able to do all that was needed to make his recovery successful. We are continuing to follow this family and will be sending them some Christmas treats as well. Thank you for stepping up in such a huge way for them!
Methodist Build
We have paid our $6500 financial gift to the Methodist Build project and Jeff Cooper will send out links with dates starting in January for anyone who would like to help build a habitat home.
Down East
Our Down East team continues to head to Goldsboro to work on Habitat projects each month on the 3rd Saturday. If you would like to learn more about this or find out when the next group is going, send an email to downeast@genesis-umc.org.
Hats for Duke
Hats for Duke has provided 57 port pillows and 522 hats to our local hospitals this year. This brings our grand total of 669 port pillows and 6152 hats made through this wonderful ministry. If you are interested in knowing when there will be another sewing event, send an email to Hats4duke@genesis-umc.org.
Dorcas Food Pantry
We will have our next food collection for Dorcas Food Pantry during Lent 2023. We staff the pantry on the 3rd and 5th Saturdays of the month and we are in need of people to sign up to volunteer. Here is the link to see what Saturdays are available and to sign up: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0e4fa5ad2e5-genesis2