Haiti Relief

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Haitian people and the relief workers. I do not know of a disaster of this magnitude in my lifetime. The Tsunami of 2004 is close. In the Tsunami 230,000,000 reportedly lost their lives. After only one week, the estimate for the Haiti Earthquake is 200,000 and rising.
UMCOR has been hit hard as well. The Director of UMCOR, Rev. Sam Dixon, as well as others with UMCOR and UM Missions were in Haiti on January 12 and have lost their lives, others are in critical condition.
As UMCOR and other relief agencies work to bring peace to the people of Haiti, they also seek their own peace as their grieve. Please continue to pray for the the relief efforts and look for ways that you can be a part of the help that is needed. Give to UMCOR by check here at the church and write Haiti #418325 in the memo line. The Conference will also deliver health kits and stock lists for the health kits is listed below. Please consider compiling a kit that we can include in the deliver.

Health Kit Items Value: $12 per kit

Place these items inside a sealed one-gallon plastic bag.

* 1 hand towel (15" x 25" up to 17" x 27", No kitchen towels)
* 1 washcloth
* 1 comb (large and sturdy, not pocket-sized)
* 1 nail file or fingernail clippers (no emery boards or toenail clippers)
* 1 bath-size bar of soap (3 oz. and up)
* 1 toothbrush (single brushes only in original wrapper, No child-size brushes)
* 6 adhesive plastic strip sterile bandages
* $1.00 to purchase toothpaste
(NOTE: UMCOR Sager Brown is now purchasing toothpaste in bulk to be added to health kits before shipping to ensure that the product does not expire before they are sent.)

Important Kit Assembly Information

* All items included in kits must be NEW items.
* All emergency kits are carefully planned to make them usable in the greatest number of situations. Since strict rules often govern product entry into international countries, it is important that kits contain only the requested items-nothing more.
* Do NOT include any personal notes, money or additional materials in the kits. These things must be painstakingly removed and will delay the shipment.

The New Year

We have made it to a new year. With the eve of another year we celebrate, we make and break resolutions, we look back on where we've been and we look ahead at where we are going. A new year is a time for a fresh start, a restart, a new start and that is what we are going to do here at FUMC Wortham. We can not become complacent and think that the growth we have seen this year is enough. No, we must keep moving ahead to be the church God has called us to be. Over the next couple of months we will look at what we do and why we do it. Everything is on the table. We must look at everything we do through the lens of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
This process of evaluation will develop in waves over the next months. This week we named the new officers for the church that had been elected at our Fall Charge Conference. In the next weeks these leaders will be trained at the Waco District Leadership Training Event at Austin Avenue United Methodist Church in Waco, TX on January 24th. In the next month we will meet for our second annual leadership retreat and discuss the future of our church as we seek to keep Christ at the center and grow to the great potential that we have here in Wortham.
Borrowing from Steven J. Covey's Habits of Highly Effective People, we will begin with the end in mind. We will look at what we envision the church to be in the future then work backwards to today and build incremental goals to ultimately reach our future potential.
I look forward to this new year as we reach beyond our walls and become a place, not only of open hearts, open doors, and open minds; but, a place that opens hearts, opens doors, and opens minds.

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