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The United Methodist Church in Mission By Judy Matheny, a United Methodist Church and Community Worker with the Bluewell-Keystone Cooperative Parish in West Virginia
Welfare Reform has decreased the amount of cash families have available to pay their bills and to buy cleaning supplies and extra food after spending their food stamps. As a Church and Community Worker, I have found numerous ways to share the miracle of God's love from the resources available to me. For example, last winter, I had the privilege of providing a used electric and coal stove for one young mother, plywood to fix a floor for another, and travel expenses for a third to drive to college classes. I also paid back taxes so that a family of five wouldn't lose their home, provided 10 families with a ton of coal each, bought book bags for kids for school, and made loans to help pay for water bills, electric bills, furnace repairs, car repairs, food, Christmas presents, and shingles for a new roof. During the summer and fall, I also helped laypeople from both parishes share God's love by working on a house. A group of four to five men replaced a floor in one room, replaced some window panes, built a porch, and made a doorway to the porch. A group of youth and their leaders scrubbed the walls and ceiling and painted one room. Earlier, when a leader had brought several of the youth to see the house so that they could decide whether or not to help paint it, one said: "I couldn't live with myself if I didn't help this family." Three women and one woman's 21-year-old grandson painted the other six rooms and scrubbed the windows. One of the women was 80 years old. These women also got some of the family who lived in the house involved in the painting. When I went to visit the family after the painting was finished, the man said to me several times: "I never thought the place would clean up this well." To see this house before and after it was worked on was to see a miracle of what love and hard work can do. You are a part of sharing the miracle of God's love as you support me as a Church and Community Worker and support the ministries in which I am involved. |
