RUMC helps stop hunger
COSHOCTON – More than 50 members and friends of the Roscoe United Methodist Church enjoyed a brief lunch and conversation following the Sunday morning worship on April 10 before launching into a full scale effort to help stop hunger in the world.
The church partnered with Stop Hunger Now, an organization that is based in Raleigh, North Carolina and provides thousands of meals for the underprivileged in countries around the world. The volunteers packaged more than 15,000 meals in a little under two hours as young and old members of the church listened to songs from the 80s and 90s while a loud gong indicated another 1,500 meals packaged and boxed.
The church not only provided the volunteer effort but also the money needed to purchase the meals, which is a minimal cost.
Roscoe UMC Pastor Dale Sutton said, “It’s really encouraging to see – we had over 50 people here – give up a couple hours on their Sunday afternoon when they could be home watching the Masters. They’re all working hard and having a lot of fun and that’s really important. That’s one of the keys here, they want to have some fun, they want to be involved and they want to help people. I’m just grateful to have willing people.”
Brad Call and his wife Sue were also helping. Call is a former Pastor at Roscoe and is now the District Superintendent for the Three Rivers District of the United Methodist Church. The local office is on Walnut Street in Coshocton.
Call said about the experience, “It’s exhilarating. It’s the church being the church. I was in my devotions this morning thinking, it’s easy to come to church, it’s easy to sing the hymns and do all that stuff, but when you leave the building that’s when the church is truly being the church. This is people being the hands and feet and the heart of Jesus today.”
“This is very consistent with our tradition of who we are as United Methodists and Methodists before that. It’s always been a part of us not only being about personal holiness but also about social holiness. So this is a great marriage of those two things where people can bring the heart of their faith to a place where they can touch other people’s lives, even people they’re never going to see but they share the love of Jesus.”
You can find out more about the program at their website www.stophungernow.org. More than 200,000 meals were packaged this week and the program serves 73 countries. 87.9 percent of donations go to fund the meals. You do not have to be a church to be involved in the program. Contact information is on the website.
mark@coshoctoncountybeacon.com
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