Teen Mission, USA, held a first-ever a “Harvest of Hope" fall festival on Saturday, October 25th, in Booneville, KY. It was a huge success as we were able to work with over 60 elementary age children at the Owsley County Elementary School. Nearly 30 volunteers from Leesburg (KY) Christian Church and El Bethel Christian Church (Owenton, KY) helped in making this event possible.The volunteers worked with the students in painting pumpkins, telling stories, playing with puppets and transforming the gym into a carnival-like atmosphere. The carnival included face painting, several games and a cake walk. Once again, a big THANKS goes out to all those folks who helped. You did a great job!
Owsley County (Booneville, KY) has become a special place for both me and Teen Mission, USA.
Over the past few years, we have been striving to build a “community partnership” approach to doing missions. By that I mean we, as an organization, are looking to “adopt” communities and do ministry there throughout the year. Eventually, we would love to have staff people living there either year-round or close to year-round. They would then serve as the mission “hosts” as short-term teams come in through our Mission Journeys outreach. When the teams were not there, these hosts would work on service projects and developing relationships with folks in the community. We don’t have the funding to pay these people or field missionaries, church planters, etc. Therefore, they would need to raise support (as traditional missionaries would) and/or be bi-vocational, working in the community.
Our first such community project is Owsley County. Owsley County is a very poor area in Eastern KY. In fact, according to the 2003 census, Owsley ranks as the 2nd poorest county in the entire United States. The average household income there is just above $17,000 per year.
The Lord has blessed and allowed us to make some good contacts at the Elementary School in Booneville. As a result, we've held Christmas Outreach projects there in 2006 and 2007. This year, we've added the fall festival along with the Christmas project. Our hope and prayer is that we could have someone "on-location" getting the work “up and running” in 2009-2010 with a church plant beginning as a result of this work.
This will not be our last ministry project in the area for this year. We will have our 4th Annual Appalachian Christmas Project, December 12-14, 2008.
This will be a special “weekend” mission trip experience that will allow families to serve together and help bring hope to folks in the Appalachian Mountains. Our focus will be on the eastern Kentucky communities of Lee County (Beattyville, KY) and Owsley County (Booneville, KY). Projects will include:
(01) Helping with some minor repairs for area homes.
(02) Coordinating a Christmas party for area children in at least 2 locations.
(03) Giving presents to 300 children and food baskets to families in need.
(04) Worshiping with a local church on Sunday.
There's room for you; contact us if you'd like to take part in this great program!
In Him,
Greg Herriford
Associate Director/Teen Mission, USA
Email = gregh@teenmission.org
Web http://www.teenmission.org/
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