UBC Baskets of Hope [BoH]: Sunday Nov. 21st

Wow, praise the Lord, what a blessing to see what God is doing through our Baskets of Hope [BoH] Ministry. Sunday evening, November 21st our church was packed with visitors and UBC folks serving!

We were able to serve a total of 208 families including 17 walk-ins that were not registered or included in our database. Including the 27 La Luz Baskets of Hope distributed earlier on Thursday, our total families served were 235! This was a record for us and we expect even more for our Christmas BoH!

Dave Bickers led worship with our UBC praise team, band, and orchestra. Pastor Tom shared the devotional from Acts 3:1-10, the healing of the lame man at the gate and then shared the gospel. We had eight [8] folks come forward for prayer, four [4] of these prayed to accept Christ! There were at least 12 folks that raised their hands acknowledging they had re-dedicated their lives to the Lord.

Cheryl Kemp leads our UBC three Baskets of Hope initiatives which are Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. She has team leaders helping in specific tasks to make all this possible culminating in one service, like our Thanksgiving BoH on Sunday evening November 21st. These are our team leaders: Pat Mitchell, database development; Dewayne Jeffers & Cathy Dwire, food ordering and pick up; Susan Byrd, basket assembly; Kelly Cummings, registration; and Sandy Huddleston, prayer counselors. In addition to these three BoH initiatives, Rachele Jeunnette leads our Monthly Baskets of Hope ministry to assist our UBC families each month with food for 3-4 meals each month too!

These team leaders have many UBC volunteers totally close to 80-100 volunteers to make this ministry possible. Thanks UBC volunteers, you have done a great job in forwarding the Kingdom of God through serving our local community! Please mark your calendar for Christmas BoH scheduled for Sunday evening, December 19th!

Baskets of Hope: La Luz Community, Thursday Nov. 18th

In an effort to encourage La Luz Apartment residents to help their neighbors and themselves, we strategically moved our Baskets of Hope Thanksgiving initiative for the La Luz residents. We rented the commercial building next door to La Luz [across from Dairy Queen], Production Services Unlimited. Cheryl Kemp, our BoH leader coordinated this effort along with Susan Byrd our BoH logistics person for assembly of the baskets.

Our prayer was that God would bring the necessary workers from La Luz to help assemble and pack the Baskets of Hope. And that’s what happened! We had about 12 La Luz residents working together to prepare the Baskets of Hope for their neighbors and themselves. Not only did they have fun, they thanked us for allowing them to get in on the work! For you see, working to help themselves improve their self-worth and ownership as they get involved in this overall process!

Pastor Dave Bickers led our worship for this evening, and Chris Straw shared the devotional and the gospel. We had three (3) folks who raised their hands for prayer and our counselors prayed with them. After the service, we distributed 27 Baskets of Hope to the families living at La Luz Apartments. Christmas BoH for La Luz will be Thursday, December 16. Residents will begin preparing and packing at 5 PM.