A hallmark of our church is outreach into our local community and throughout the world.
One Square Meal is our featured mission emphasis for the spring and summer. We use the produce from our community garden plus other donated foods to prepare and serve a nutritious meal to adults and children living in the Machebeuf Apartments. Partnering with Mountain View Church and Catholic Charities, together we offer a truly ecumenical outreach into our community. In summer 2019 we prepared and served lunch on six Fridays, totaling 227 meals including 170 lunches for children and 57 lunches for adults. The children also enjoyed crafts and science activities.
Other local missions include the following:
- We continue our decades-long support of the Yampa Mountain High School Teen Parent Program through a yearly diaper and wipes drive and occasional donations of baby blankets. In February 2020 we delivered 1,425 diapers and 3,156 wipes to the school.
- LIFT-UP, the food pantry in the Roaring Fork Valley, is our mission emphasis in October. We Trick or Treat for LIFT-UP at Halloween. In October 2019 we collected 254.5 pounds of food for LIFT-UP. Throughout the year we collect food weekly and deliver it to LIFT-UP. In January 2020 we delivered 37.5 pounds of food – collected by our children in boxes they decorated and set in the sanctuary during Advent.
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Trick or Treat for Lift up Feed My Sheep – housing for the homeless. We gave our Christmas Eve 2019 offering of $771.
- Community Garden – We plant, water, weed, and harvest vegetables from our two community garden plots. We added the second plot in 2020. We contribute lots of fresh veggies to LIFT-UP, to our congregation, and to Garfield County Senior Meals.
- Worldwide missions include the following:
- One Great Hour of Sharing is our yearly Lenten emphasis. The children color cardboard fish banks and give them to the congregation so that they can be filled with offerings. The banks are collected at Easter. The congregation is encouraged to donate generously to this offering, over and above the normal pledges. In 2021 we gave $1,538.16 to One Great Hour of Sharing.
- Peace and Global Witness, another special offering of PCUSA, is collected in the fall. In 2020 we collected $759.