First Things First

July 2016

Sunday Services

FUMC Worship:

8:30 a.m.

11:00 a.m.

FSUMC Worship:

1:00 p.m.

(First Sunday of the month is a

joint service of FUMC &

FSUMC)

Nursery Care begins:

10:45 a.m.

In this issue:

West Virginia

Flooding

1

Flag Day 2

Book Club

&

Office Closure

3

VBS

&

Handyman

&

Finance

4

Calendar,

Birthdays,

Anniversaries,

& Prayer List

5

First United Methodist Church

June 28, 2016 | UMNS The Rev. Scott Ferguson was away on vacation when the floods

hit Clendenin, West Virginia, last week. When he finally got a look at the parsonage of Clendenin United Methodist Church, he realized he and his wife wouldn’t be staying there for a while longer. “We took about three and a half feet of water in our home,” Ferguson said. “Everything downstairs is lost.” But he’s made progress with mud removal, and he’s determined that he and his congre-gation will stay the course spiritually during a hard time. “We just want to make sure God is praised even through the storm,” he said. Last week, parts of West Virginia saw 9 inches of rain in a matter of hours, causing some of worst flooding the state has seen in three decades. The floods claimed 23 lives and damaged or destroyed thousands of homes. Some residents remain without power. West Virginians are still in awe of the epic downpour. “The amount of rain was just unimaginable,” said the Rev. J.F. Lacaria, director of con-nectional ministries for the West Virginia Conference. United Methodists are helping with relief efforts in various ways, including churches that served as shelters first, and then became donation and distribution centers. But in the hardest-hit communities, such as Clendenin, on the Elk River in south central West Virginia, and White Sulphur Springs and Rainelle, in the southeastern part of the state, churches are dealing with their own losses. A related fatality occurred within Clendenin United Methodist Church. A member died, apparently of a heart attack, while shoveling mud after the heavy rain, Ferguson said. Along with damage to the parsonage, Clendenin United Methodist Church itself took on several feet of water in the basement. “Everything in that basement is going to have to come out,” Ferguson said. “We lost eve-rything in our kitchen. We lost everything in our fellowship hall. We lost everything in our nursery … The Boy Scouts lost everything in their room.” Ferguson also leads Brawley Chapel United Methodist Church, a smaller church right on the Elk River. Its foundation, eroded by the floods, continues to move. “It won’t be long before it’s in the river,” Ferguson said of the church. “It’s a complete loss.” Churches serve as relief centers Emmanuel United Methodist Church, in White Sulphur Springs, was spared severe flood-ing damage, and has become a major center for distribution of relief items. “We’ve got buckets, we’ve got water, we’ve got food, we’ve got paper towels,” said the Rev. Shari Stilgenbauer, pastor. “We’ve even got pet food and kitty litter.” White Sulphur Springs saw some of the worst flooding, to the point that next week’s Greenbrier Classic PGA tournament at the local Greenbrier Resort has been canceled. Stilgenbauer said home damage is widespread. “More have massive damage. … It’s devastating, and that’s putting it mildly. We have a couple of little communities – things are just gone. We have a trailer park that’s basically wiped out.”

(Continued on page 2)

West Virginia Churches Cope, Help After Historic Floods By Sam Hodges

Rainelle is another southeastern West Virginia community that was badly hurt by the floods. The Rainelle United Methodist Church – made entirely of American chestnut before blight removed that tree from the landscape — had some damage but has served as a donation center, Lacarria said. Early response teams from local United Methodist churches are beginning to help with relief work. “They’re just moving to the muck-out phase,” Lacarria said. The New Vision Depot, a West Virginia Conference facility in Beaver, West Virginia, has volunteers distributing clean-out buckets and health kits. Conference prepared for disaster The West Virginia Conference was well prepared to deal with this emergency, said Greg Forrester, who coordinates U.S. disaster response for the United Methodist Committee on Relief and has worked directly with the Rev. Dan Low-ther, the conference disaster response coordinator. “We did a capacity building grant with them so they could actually do training with all of their district disaster re-sponse coordinators,” Forrester said. “That happened about six weeks ago.” Those district coordinators, he added, “have been mobilized since the storm.” The Rev. Jeffrey Allen is a United Methodist elder who serves as executive director of the West Virginia Council of Churches, an ecumenical group that responds to disasters. “We’ve identified five staging areas across the state where we are deploying clergy to provide pastoral support to persons who have been impacted by the flood and first responders,” Allen said. Stilgenbauer was cheered by both the organized and ad hoc relief efforts she was seeing in her area. “The community is pulling together in ways I’d never imagined,” she said. Forrester stressed that the conference currently is not hosting early response volunteers from outside the state. Do-nations through UMCOR in response to the West Virginia flooding can be made to the agency’s U.S. disaster re-sponse fund. West Virginia Conference Bishop Sandra Steiner Ball wrote a prayer prompted by the flooding, and it’s posted on the conference website. It begins: “Oh God, hold your children of West Virginia in your strong arms once again. You know the loss, the crisis, the chaos, the pain that is being experienced by those affected by storm and flood. In the midst of this adversity, please be very present with the families and the communities who have been devastated and are searching for things and for answers.” Hodges, a United Methodist News Service writer, lives in Dallas. Contact him at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org Linda Bloom of UMNS and the Rev. Deborah Coble of the West Virginia Conference contributed. Source: http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/west-virginia-churches-cope-help-after-historic-floods On July 3rd we will be collecting special offering for UMCOR to help with the relief efforts.

July 2016 First United Methodist Church

We had a great meeting as we discussed Mrs. Lincoln’s Dress-

maker by Jennifer Chiaverini. We had a great discussion on the

history of seamstresses and dress making.

In July we will be reading Eligible Curtis Sittenfeld:

This version of the Bennet family—and Mr. Darcy—is one that you have and haven’t met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late thirties who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help—and dis-cover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling and the family is in disarray. Youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are too busy with their CrossFit workouts and Paleo diets to get jobs. Mary, the middle sister, is earning her third online master’s degree and barely leaves her room, except for those mysterious Tuesday-night outings she won’t discuss. And Mrs. Bennet has one thing on her mind: how to marry off her daughters, especially as Jane’s fortieth birthday fast approaches. Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show Eligible. At a Fourth of July barbecue, Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip’s friend neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. . . . And yet, first im-pressions can be deceiving.

We will be meeting on July 25th at 7:00 p.m. at the home of Ann York, for directions please call 677-7785.

Upcoming Book:

July:

Eligible

By Curtis Sittenfeld

August:

Under the Wide and Starry Sky

By Nancy Horan

September:

A Man Called Ove

By Fredrick Backman

October:

Alexander Hamilton

By Ron Chernox

Book Club

Office Closed

The church office will be closed

July 4th & July 29th

July 2016 First United Methodist Church

Vacation Bible School

We have been invited to have our families at-

tend a few different VBS:

Both are using the same curriculum It's called

"Surf Shack" and kids get to catch the wave of

God's amazing love, explore God's mission for

their lives and encounter powerful water stories

from the Bible. The puppet this year is "Snappy

the Crab" and he will be visiting each day. .

1. St John UMC July 11th-15th. 9am-noon. You can register online at http://www.stjohneagle.com

2.Anchor Park UMC July 20th, 21st and 22nd! There will be many opportunities for you to volunteer to help make this a very special Vacation Bible School. You can contact their office at 277-0152 for more information

Handy Man Report

We are steadily making headway as we repair and upgrade our beautiful church home. The flooring in the boy’s bath-

room and the carpet in the entrance will be installed late in July and we saved enough to get the carpet for the office as

well! Our lighting project has yielded good results seeing how we have changed out 30 fixtures with only about 90 to go.

We can always use more LED light bulbs. This is a BIG CHURCH!!! We have a reasonable quote to replace the 65-150

watt lights in the Sanctuary, but that project will be later this fall. The roof repairs are also to be completed by the end of

summer and that will buy us 3 to 5 years before we need to make a complete roof replacement.

Thanks to Steve Maga and his crew as they work the floors and installing the window in the pastor’s office door, Saili

Maga and crew for the work on the yard, to Dan Cary for working the Pastor’s door lock and to Brain Greenlee for mud-

ding and taping the basement walls and working on repairing the window latch in the

classroom! We could really use a carpet person who would help stretch and replace a

piece of carpet … any volunteers?? Call me at 907-696-5453. It is really great when we

all pull together.

So far 95% of these repairs have been made with donations with little cost to our oper-

ating budget. To all who have donated thank you.

Blessed to be working away ………..

May Finance Minute

It is a pleasure to announce that our contributions are ahead of last year, but slightly

behind pledge amounts. The year so far is developing about the same as last year, with a

few exceptions. Rental income is down but we have made head way in reducing water and

electric bills through our LED lighting and water saver projects. It is also nice to note that

these programs have been completed with very little general fund money, mostly by

donations of labor and money. Thanks to all who have given so graciously.

We will be providing a 6 month snapshot in July to bring everyone up to date on the

complete finance picture.

As we head into the fall, we will be looking for new members who might like to serve on the finance

committee and help us navigate our way through our churches commitments. If you are interested please let

me know and I will get your name to the Nominations and Training committee.

Lani Kile

Co-Chair

(907) 696-5453

Tyler Kile 3

Angelo Tutaan 6

Eleanor Franke 7

Marian Stephens 9

Cliff Huston 10

Katrina Villamor 17

Georganna Derrick 18

Elvaree Sumpter 18

Roy Snyder 26

Robin Bland 29

Anthony Schaaper 29

HAVE WE MISSED

YOUR BIRTHDAY OR

ANNIVERSARY?

PLEASE CALL THE

OFFICE AND LET US

KNOW!

June Wedding Anniversaries

John & Myrna Waters

36 years

Lance % Cheryl Clark

14 years

Congratulations to these

happy couples!!!

Prayer List

Our thoughts and prayers are extended to:

† Fred Stassell

† West Virginia

† Orlando

† Burl & Marian Stephens

† Our military personnel

July Birthdays