April 24, 2022

As you have heard numerous times in sermons from Hunter over this last year, he was very excited about the Local Service Opportunities activities that were planned and implemented for our church last year. So, it is no surprise that we are working at developing another set of activities for our church to reach out to our local community. Below is the list of activities being worked on for the spring and summer of 2022.

2022 Local Service Opportunities Being Developed for You, Neffsville MC

Educational and Service Opportunities for Children and Families - this planning team will create activities that will focus on educational and service opportunities for our children and their families. Watch for more information on specific activities as they are being developed.  The planning team is: Marcy High, Dave Bruce, Linda Bomberger, working in coordination with Ally Weaver.

Mental Health Awareness: You Are Not Alone – This planning team will work on two areas. 1) Plan presentations for Neffsville MC about mental health awareness needs around us, including some fundraising for them; 2) Start a support group for parents of children with mental health issues, drawing from our church and community. This planning team is composed of Shelby Witmer, Phil Chapman and Dave Bruce.  These planners would welcome anyone else interested in joining their planning team, to help them develop this project: if interested, please reach out to one of them!

Lancaster Area Compassion Project – Like last year, this team will work with LOVE, INC to serve our neighbors through small home repairs, yard work, and various other projects during a one-day outreach. This team is also exploring other ways to support our local community with similar projects. The outreach date and information will follow as it is developed. Dave Leaman, Bonnie Bruce and Bob Bear head up this planning team.

NMC Community Garden Project – Matthew and Katie Rose Moffett are exploring the possibility of using some of our church’s land to start a community garden for the 2023 growing season. The Moffetts would welcome anyone else interested in joining their planning team, to explore the development of this project: if interested, reach out to one of them!

MYF Blessings of Hope Food Distribution Project – John Bomberger plans to work with the MYF students and leadership to create an activity that would include boxing up food at Blessings of Hope, and later, to help to distribute these boxes to our community. Details of this activity will follow.

Community Sharing and Caring Project – Similar to last year’s donation project, Brianna Moyer and John Bomberger plan to develop a list of local community organizations that are currently supporting our community in a variety of ways. They plan to provide information about these organizations as we seek to support them with our donations as a church again this year. These planners would welcome anyone else interested in joining their planning team, to help develop this project: if interested, please reach out to one of them!

Refuge Support – The needs for the rising number of refuges coming to Lancaster County is immense! If our church wants to get involved in supporting these refuges and their organizations, we will need to develop a planning team for this activity: we don’t currently have a planning team. If you are interested in joining a planning team, to decide how we, as a church, would like to support our growing refugee community in 2022, please contact Phil Hostetter.

Continue to watch for updates on specific activities from each of these planning teams as they are being developed. Please consider joining one of these planning teams to help share the planning load for these activities as well. We are grateful for those who have stepped up to help make these activities happen this year!