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Fruit-Packing Trip Highlights Newsletter Activity
OLYMPIA, WA (October 15, 2003) - A total of 13 adults and youth from River Ridge
Covenant Church were involved in a unique Gleanings mission trip recently
to Sultana, California.
The primarily junior high aged contingent lived at a Youth With a Mission
(YWAM) facility in a small central California camp called Gleanings for the
Hungry. The camp serves as a fruit production base. For most of the time,
youth and adult volunteers helped dry fruit at the YWAM base. They also
packaged previously dried fruit into five-gallon buckets that are later
sent to disadvantaged countries, Paula Reiner writes in a church newsletter
article. The group often worked from around 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. processing
fruit.
The group included adult leaders Paula Reiner, Gary Melhaff, and Jim
Patterson as well as a number of youth, including high school leader Greg
Reiner, Melissa Patterson, Adam Eastman, Hannah Norby, Ian Theibert, Holly
Price, Katie Melhaff, Kevin Bedard, Phillip Kendall and Marshal Heffernan.
"It's hard to explain to people why anyone in their right mind would go to
Gleanings," reported Reiner. "It's hot (in the 100s), the work is
excruciatingly boring, it stinks of rotten fruit . . . you get motion
sickness from the conveyor belts, and then there are the blisters and
slivers and the flies. And yet over and over again the youth say they have
fun. How can that be? While they may have trouble expressing their
thoughts, I think our junior highers have discovered what God is all about
- relationships . . . at Gleanings they learn they are one in Christ and it
frees us to build relationships with each other despite our differences."
The River Ridge experience is just one of many reflected in the more than
250 local church newsletters received each month by the Department of
Communication. The following newsletter highlights are grouped by
conference or region.
CENTRAL
- Chicago, Illinois: Jessica Bergstrom of Ravenswood Evangelical Covenant
Church is headed overseas on a Peace Corps project in January. Bergstrom
graduated from North Park University with a degree in International
Business in May and is currently at Illinois State University in Normal
working on a Master's in Applied Economics.
MIDWEST
- Arvada, Colorado: Arvada Covenant Church's Kinsey Anderson, a student
at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, did a unique Campus Crusade
project last summer, working in Vail, Avon, Minturn and Glenwood Springs,
Colorado, and doing friendship evangelism. She served as a waitress at a
Vail resort along with six others from her project. The group did outreach
events during the summer and were involved in
leadership training. Anderson, a junior at Colorado State, works with
Campus Crusade's program on campus and is majoring in Human Development
with hopes of continuing her education in graduate school and becoming a
physician's assistant.
NORTH PACIFIC
- Salem, Oregon: Trinity Covenant Church youth and adults helped their
city by painting fire hydrants for a recent service club project. The
city's volunteer coordinator, Tibby Larson, wrote a thank you letter to the
club, noting that the efforts of the 22 people involved are listed on the
city's web site. Their volunteer work saved the city more than $180 by
painting more than 20 hydrants.
NORTHWEST
- Dawson, Minnesota: Kevin Lindblad of Dawson Covenant Church pitched for
the Cerro Gordo fast pitch softball team that placed second in the Class B
finals and went on to finish seventh in a national tourney in Wisconsin.
Another youth at the church, Kari Pearson, is modeling for a local
clothier.
PACIFIC SOUTHWEST
- Oakland, California: First Covenant Church high school student Kiah
Hooks of St. Mary's High School in nearby Berkeley played for the East Bay
Xplosion, an under-14 division girls basketball team that captured first
place at an Amateur Athletic Union tourney in Dayton, Ohio, this summer.
Another youth at the church, Zachariah Stephens, placed fourth in his
division in a Junior Olympics Judo event in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
- Redwood City, California: A Skatechurch ministry that has been in
existence for nearly three years at Peninsula Covenant Church is making its
mark on area children and teens. Nine students in the program were baptized
in a roadside waterfall on their way home from Skatechurch's annual trip to
Portland, Oregon, in August. Chris Probasco directs Skatechurch at
Peninsula Covenant.
To learn more about the activities of youth and young adults in the
Covenant, regularly visit the Covenant news report on this website at
www.covchurch.org. To submit material for consideration in this news
report, call 773-907-8333 or email the material to the Department of
Communication at newsdesk@covchurch.org.
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
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