Conway FUMC has supported numerous trips to UMCOR Depot at the Sager Brown Center in Baldwin, Louisiana. UMCOR, United Methodist Committee On Relief, has a huge warehouse there where items are gathered to be sent all over the world for disaster relief. Workers who travel there assist in checking and boxing kits and see firsthand the operations of UMCOR.

 

Volunteers In Mission groups have gone to Santiago, Chile, to work in 2001, 2003, and July of 2005. Construction, repair, painting, and cleaning on both the workshop facility and the group home were accomplished by the groups. Work at the local ecumenical seminary was also done in 2003. We got acquainted with the participants in the workshop program and interacted with them. Each Chile VIM team has included a dozen person who will never forget this mission experience. A trip is being planned for Juy 2009.

 

In April 2003 a group from FUMC traveled to Red Bird Mission in Beverly, Kentucky, to work. Some of the team worked on house repair in the valley; some worked in the local community store; some worked with our missionary at the time, Shirley Crouse, at the pre-school class of the Red Bird Mission School. The Red Bird Mission supports their community well. This is a very poor area in the Appalachian Mountains.

 

More VIM trips to new areas will be planned in the future. Our youth in the spring of 2004 traveled to San Antonio, Texas, to work with the homeless program in the inner-city, and several members of our congregation helped in the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. This type of hands-on mission experience has been very popular with our congregation.

 

Plans are now in the works for a trip in Spring 2009 to Red Bird Mission, and our next trip to Chile will be in January 2010.

 

For more information about Volunteers in Mission, contact Carole Teague at conwayfumc.org or at 329-3801.