Iowa United Methodists to host the 46th annual Mission Ingathering

Each year on the first Saturday in November at five sites around Iowa, United Methodists gather to bring gifts, to share offerings, and to learn about ways that their offerings for missions help others.

The Southeast Iowa site is Mt. Pleasant, where the First United Methodist Church will be a center of activity on Saturday, Nov. 1 as church representatives bring their congregations’ gifts and in-kind donations to be counted and packed.

Church congregations bring gifts of school kits, personal dignity kits, sewing kits, and layette kits and others. These kits contain basic supplies for learning, for hygiene, for sewing, and for care of new babies. The kits are boxed by type, then shipped to Midwest Mission Distribution Center in central Illinois where they are staged until a call comes to send them to a place or a people with a need. The kits may be sent anywhere in the world that they can be useful, without regard for the religious views of the potential recipients. Kits contain items that are readily available to any of us, but are often unavailable due to weather events, economic difficulties, or political injustice.

Also welcome are sewing machines, bicycles, hand tools, garden tools, medical devices, and fire fighting gear. For more information about giving and operations, visit midwestmission.org.

From 1:00-4:00, there will be display booths for Ingathering mission projects including Church World Service, Self Help International, Iowa Nigeria Partnership, Heifer International, Mobility Worldwide, as well as Midwest Mission. These organizations work to alleviate hunger and poverty, and their causes.

People coming to the Ingathering will meet friends to compare notes and share stories, visit with the booth representatives, and then imagine ways to serve more.

The bazaar table has a variety of home baked foods and a variety of craft items for sale, which may include woodcrafts to crochet to knitting to ceramics. Some things are purchased as gifts, and others are eaten that day! All proceeds of the bazaar table will be available for use in and near the Southeast Iowa neighborhoods and towns of the congregations who can imagine ways to reduce hunger among their neighbors.

At 4:00 we will pause for a service of sending including prayer, songs of praise and thanks, a word of encouragement, with a vocal selection by Blair Buffington. In the service, the people present focus their attention and gratitude to God for the opportunity to be stewards of such abundance.

There is no admission charge to enter the Thanksgiving Ingathering site, located at the First United Methodist Church, 309 North Main Street in Mt. Pleasant. Parking is free nearby and the site is handicap accessible. People who are interested in mission opportunities and mission work are welcome to explore ways to work together. Most of the Ingathering projects are interdenominational.