WOMEN AT CROSSROAD CHANGING HEART,

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1 WOMEN AT CROSSROADS JULY SEPTEMBER 2014 The Women s Ministry Quarterly Newsletter Crossroads United Methodist Church 200 Bays Cove Trail Kingsport, TN Coming soon! OCTOBER BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH! Our New Meeting Place! -THE COURTYARD- (201 E New Street) Beginning in July, 2014, we start meeting each month for our business meeting on the 2nd Tuesday at THE COURTYARD in downtown Kingsport, TN from 11:30 AM 12:30 PM. -MISSY SMITHSON RENFRO, Guest Speaker -American Cancer Society- October 9 th 6:30-7:30pm Crossroads UMC Missy is a Breast Cancer survivor. She has been cancer free now for 8 yrs. Come hear Missy s testimony of how God has lead her through very tough challenges in her life. Missy was the guest speaker at the 2014 American Cancer Society s - CANCER Relay for Life! Convention held at Maryville College, Maryville, TN. BIRTHDAY LIST: AUGUST 5 Shirley Carter 6 Linda Grills Smith 24 Diana Perry 27 Joretta McConnell JULY 3- Sherry Sutherland 6 Patsy Emory 7 Kathy Dean 7 Barbara Nelm 9 Teresa Clark 11 Donna Sensabaugh 11 Jean Anderson 14 Anna Kate Baines 24 Phyllis Castle 31 Paula Bullick SEPTEMBER 4 Donna Decker 6 Kay Alley 12 Debbie Salyers 14 Rhonda Givens 20 Melinda White 23 - Barbara Brown 25 Deborah Castle

2 On the Calendar Gal s A Going Excursions July 25 Greenville TN Deliver Backpacks & tour of Holston Home, & lunch at General Morgan s Inn Carpool from Crossroads UMC at 10:30 am August 29 Mooresburg, TN Lunch at Green Tomato Carpool from Crossroads UMC at 10:30 am October 31 Rogersville, TN Lunch at Jubilee Gallery Carpool from Crossroads UMC at 11:00 am November 21 Rogersville, TN G* Thanksgiving Lunch at Hale s Spring Inn Carpool from Crossroads UMC at 11:00 am The Book Club August 7:00 PM Home of Joyce Purinton Book of Discussion: CROSSROADS by Wm. Paul Young (Author of THE SHACK). Women s Power Lunch July 8 THE 11:30 am - 12:30 pm August 12 THE 11:30 am 12:30 pm It is that time of year Let s Plan! Women s Ministry 2015 Planning THE COURTYARD September 9 Consider new ideas and recommendation for our 2015 Women s Ministry Program Year September 26 Finalize and Approve 2015 Women s Ministry Program & Calendar October 14 Plan our 2014 Annual Ladies Christmas Dinner ANNUAL LADIES CHRISTMAS DINNER December Crossroads 6:30 8:30 Dinner will be catered by: PIG N CHICK, Rogersville, TN Mark your calendars now! Invitations w/rsvp will be sent out in November!

3 Circle Reports The Homebound Circle (Coordinator - Shirley White) At the beginning of the 2 nd Quarter, we had 17 members on our homebound roll. Currently, we are serving 15 homebound members. Our homebound members have served our church in the past so faithfully and we strive to make every effort to keep them informed and a part of the ecclesiastical life of Crossroads UMC. They are not forgotten! Listed is how we are keeping in touch with our long-standing homebound members: February Delivered Quart Jars of Homemade Soup/Cornbread Muffins April Delivered small Easter Tins filled with Easter treats. May Mother s Day Cards were mailed to all the ladies on our homebound list July Patriotic cards will be mailed to all homebound. September Quart Jars of Homemade Soup/Cornbread Muffins November Loaf of Homemade Breads December Christmas Cookie Tins The Greeting Card Circle: (Coordinator - Joyce Purinton) The Greeting Card Circle was formed to encourage a closer relationship with our congregation. In the past quarter (April June), the Greeting Card circle mailed out a total of 80 Greeting Cards to our members and to our homebound members: 31 Birthday Cards, 42 Homebound cards of Encouragements 1 Sympathy Card, 4 Get Well Cards, Two Thank You cards. If you would like to support this ministry, we need Birthday cards or Thinking-of-You Cards/Encouragement Cards, or a Roll of Postage Stamps. We appreciate your thoughtfulness. All supplies can be given to Joyce Purinton. The Welcome Circle: (Coordinator Shirley White) We need a few ladies from each of our worship services, to help us identify new visitors that attend worship at Crossroads! There are Welcome Packages that the church would like to handout to all first-time Visitors. If you would like to help us identify these new folks, it would really promote this effort. Crossroads Welcome Packages are located on a table to the left as you enter our sanctuary-in the corner. Each Welcome Package contain our church brochure, pens and other useful items. We need volunteers to help us promote this ministry to all new first time visitors to Crossroads. We have discovered in the past, this Welcome Ministry has proven to be a 95% success rate of new visitors returning and later joining our congregation! If you would like to help and know more details about this ministry, contact Shirley White or Sherry Renfro

4 Missions Girlfriends Women s Ministry would like to thank the Crusaders for their generous donation to Operation Backpack in memory of their late fellow class members, Bill & Gloria Whetsel. And we would like to thank the congregation for supporting this mission project. We were able to collect $ to help purchase the following school supplies for Holston Home Children: 2 cases Yellow Highlighters 4 cases Notebook Paper 3 cases Composition Notebooks 12 cases Spiral Notebooks 2 cases Glue Sticks 3 cases - #3 Yellow Pencils 2 cases Erasers 3 cases pencil pouches 2 cases 3 ring Binders 2 cases Washable Markers 3 cases 200 ct Index Cards Black and Blue Ink Pens Several wall-mounted Manual Pencil Sharpeners These items will be delivered on July 25 th on our trip to Holston Home. Come join us! We are invited to take a tour of their facility and we plan to eat lunch at the General Morgan s Inn in downtown Greenville, TN LABELS FOR EDUCATION Collection RED BIRD MISSION Hanes General Mill Betty Crocker Land of the Lakes Yoplait Hefty Reynolds Zip-lock Campbell Soups Progressive Soups Green Giant GRANDS Pillsbury Motts Gold Medal Scotts Kleenex Old El Paso Totino Pizza Hamburger Helper Ocean Spray Horizon Organics Alpine Lace Cheese Boise Office Paper COMFORT FLEECE Wellmont Pediatric We are collecting colorful Fleece Throws and Preemie Hats, for Kingsport Wellmont Pediatric Floor - to offer comfort for kids (infants to Teens) who are going through a life-experience. Our collection bin is in the Mission Hallway. Please be aware - all items will go through the laundry and packaged by Wellmont Hospital before distribution. Patterns can be found on-line at if you are interested in helping with this mission. We accept small preemie quilts, knit or crochet and preemie hats. If you prefer to make a donation, to help us purchase the fleece throws, please designate to: Wellmont Comfort Fleece on the offering envelope.

5 We the people of the United Methodist Church - Who we are: It is as the Scriptures say: The Godly man gives generously to the poor. His good deeds will be an honor to him forever. (2 Corinthians 9:9) On Sunday, June 8-11, Pastor Randy and Lay Member to the Annual Conference, Jean Mowrey attended the Conference and Retreat Center in Haywood County North Carolina. Also, in attendance was one of our youth, Matthew Gilbert, who as a leader of our Kingsport District Youth was representing them at the conference. For those who may not be familiar with The Methodist Church, the Annual Conference is a yearly meeting to Holston United Methodists for spiritual renewal, ministry, and business decisions. Ordination and appointments of Clergy also take place. Our founder, John Wesley, desired Annual Meetings to be a means of God s grace through Christian conferencing. This year s Annual Conference was comprised of about 2,000 clergy and lay members representing 887 churches and twelve districts in East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and North Georgia. Also, attending were representatives of three related colleges, five Wesley Foundations, a Children s Home, and retirement community, four camps, and several seminaries and ministry teams. The theme of this year s conference was Always/Yesterday, Today and Forever. Registration began at 2 PM Sunday with the opening worship beginning at 7:30 PM. Holy Communion was served at each day s worship service. Sunday evening s worship was filled with much singing and praising the Lord through song. Our speaker was Bishop, Mary Virginia Taylor. It was Pentecost Sunday so she based her message on Acts 2. She encouraged worshippers to received the Holy Spirit and turn outward, and not to take for granted the United Methodist symbol is a cross and flame. She said We are not to be sitting in our churches and waiting for people to come to us. God s Spirit should turn us outward! One of the most exciting things that happened on Monday was it was reported that Holston churches had exceeded expectations for our Hands-On-Mission collection for Africa. Members in almost all of Holston s 87 churches began collecting food, school, health, and sewing supplies for United Methodist missions and schools in Liberia and Zimbabwe during the month of May. Early in June, they delivered the canned ham, shampoo, pencils, back packs to their district offices. These items were then transported by trucks to the Fairview United Methodist Church in Maryville which was the central packing location for our conference. When all the supplies arrived at this church, there were not enough trucks to get them to the coast for shipping overseas. So, for the fire time ever, Holston Conference ordered a fourth ocean-carrying container to transport these life sustaining supplies to Africa. Shipping the four containers to Africa will cost about $32, which will be offset by the $5.00 donation our members give for each mission kit assembled. Members of Holston Annual Conference celebrated the Hands-On-Mission project with a prayer and the traditional honk of truck horns. The supplies are expected to arrive in Liberia and Zimbabwe in August. In Zimbabwe the food buckets will feed children for a year at Ishe Anesu Project, led b y missionary, Maria Humbane. In Liberia, supplies will be distributed by missionary, Helen Robert-Evans to United Methodist schools throughout the country. The Hands-On-Mission Project has been organized by Holston for about15 years and keeps getting bigger each year. The Rev. Mike Sluder, who is the Associate Director of Connectional Ministries for Missions, said, A lot of churches don t have an avenue to do missions on an international level. This gives them a way to reach out beyond themselves and gives them a real sense of accomplishment. This year we collected a total of 8,651Kits Valued at $194, Later Monday morning, an award was presented to our Holston Conference by a representative of the General Board of Global Ministries based in New York City, for being a top United Methodist Conference for missions giving. Holston received the award because 82% of its 887 churches donated money through our denominations program for voluntary giving to missions such as Imagine No Malaria, South Sudan, and Disaster Response. In 2013, Holston churches alone gave more than $2.3 million to missions through these programs. The representative said: Holston Conference is a sacrament of Christ s Love and so many ways.

6 Many other happenings occurred which I will report on in our next newsletter. Sometimes the reports we have to sit through seem endless, but it s important that we, as United Methodists, know what important work is going on in our churches and denomination. Blessings to you and keep on keeping on for the Lord s work! Respectfully submitted, Jean Mowrey, Lay Member to Annual Conference COMING SOON! WOMEN MINISTRY TO WELCOME TWO BEAUTIFUL BABIES! Look for two beautiful Utility Totes which will be set out in our Narthex in the near future for collecting diapers, baby items, & gift cards to help our new parents for their arrivals!