* UPDATED INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS INTERESTED IN SERVING IN ALASKA FOR ICE-FLOODING RECOVERY
Volunteers will be responsible for their own travel expense and should plan on arriving in Fairbanks or Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada. Travel from these two locations is being provided, but must be coordinated beforehand. Coordination for travel from Dawson will handled by Rob, and will require an up to date Passport. Travel through Fairbanks will be done with Arlan DeYong at
ajdeyong@gci.net. It might require folks to spend a night in a motel in Fairbanks. Ideally people would fly to Anchorage, rent an RV big enough to house the team and then drive to Eagle. That would provide a better housing arrangement but it would be much more expensive.
Housing at this time is tents and temperatures can get a little cool so they need to bring sleeping bags rated to 0 degrees. They can check weather at
http://www.acuweather.com/ or
http://www.weatherunderground.com/ for the time they will be there.
Food is being provided and showers are available in the school.
Please bring your own hand tools. You might even want to bring some you could leave there after you are ready to return. I am sure the residents can put them to good use.
This is a remote village and there is little shopping available, so it is imperative that the volunteers come prepared for their own needs for the duration of their stay. It is being recommended that a stay of two weeks is best.
There will be the possible need for teams next year but what that will look like will not be clear until after September.
Thank you.
*PRAYER REQUESTS FOR FUTURE TEAMS LEAVING FROM CAL-NEVADA CONFERENCE
1) A Multi-Church Team to Vava’u, Tonga: July 21 – August 4, 2009
Richard Thompson from Bakersfield – First UMC will lead a team of 15 volunteers from various churches in our conference, Oklahoma and Washington to Tonga. The team will be doing medical work, construction work and an after-school program. Joining Richard will be Ofa Thompson, Rebekah Thompson, Aaron Thompson, Ray Bowles, Fred Cramer, Gerry Stratton and Scott Wallace of Bakersfield - First UMC Larry Kavinoky, Cindy Gyugyi, and Stephen Gyugyi of Palo Alto - Wesley UMC Mark Thompson of Miami, OK. and Wyatt Finn from Olympia, WA.
2) Mother and daughter volunteer to join missionary daughter in Cambodia:
June 23 – August 12
Martha Parker of Mill Valley – Mt. Tamalpais UMC will join her daughter Katherine Parker ( A GBGM UM Missionary) in Cambodia to aid with projects there. Martha’s other daughter Janet Parker has been serving in the region since April 28th and will continue through June 12th. Martha’s background is in nursing and she has a community health and advance practice as the Mill Valley School district nurse. You can check out all the Parker’s activities at Katherine’s missionary blog:
http://chad-cambodia.blogspot.com/3) Multi-Church Medical Team to Coatepique, Guatemala: July 31 – August 9
Doug & Betsy McLeod of Concord UMC will lead another team back to Guatemala. The team of 18 will include doctors, a LVN, a pharmacist and a medical student. They include Maribeth Sayre, Tim Paris, Jill Paris and Robert Kirk of Concord UMC Sidney Warner, Susan Pintar, Rebecca Jensen, Warren Shaul, Anita Shaul and Susan Paslov of Carson Valley - First UMC Judith Rech of Lexington, KY - First UMC Jan Pearson
of Walnut Creek UMC Alice Impraim and Wolfgang Meier of Alamo - San Ramon Valley UMC Leslie Lessenger of Benicia, CA. - CCCUCC Michelle Kop and James Lessenger.
4) Lodi UMC to Camp Monte Toyon of Aptos, CA.: July 25 – Aug. 2
Team leader Kathy Baldauf will lead a team of 11 to serve at Camp Monte Toyon. They will be working on a variety of tasks there. Kathy will be joined by James Schultz, Larry Bonadurer, William Davidson, Henry Geiszler, Ina Schultz, Carol Bonadurer, Phyllis Geiszler, Virginia Moore, Virginia Green and Marilyn Field of Lodi - First UMC.
5) Korean UMC of Santa Clara Valley Team to Almaty, Kazakhstan: July 26 – Aug. 6
Team leader Jake Rhee will lead a team of 4 to serve in Kazakhstan. They will serve by fitting eye glasses and providing photo ministries there. Jake will be joined by Yune Oh, Suk Soon Chung, Kee Choi and Benson Choi of Korean UMC of Santa Clara Valley.
6) Assessment Team to Jamaica: August 4-9
Team leader and Interim UMVIM Director Phil Bandy will lead a team of 10 to Fiji to assess new projects there. Joining Phil will be Scott Allread, Frances Allred, Jerry Allred, Nymphas Edwards, Lois Edwards, Weldon Sons, Sandy Sons, Edward Hewitt and Susan Hewitt.
7) Lynnewood UMC of Pleasanton & First UMC of San Diego Team to
Seward, Alaska: August 8-15
Team leader Steve Elliott will lead a team of 9 to serve in Seward, Alaska. They will be doing some construction work as well as teaching VBS classes. Steve will be joined by Gabe Elliott, Becca Elliott, Kim Risedorph, Joy Hamilton, Wendy Kenley, Cyndi Atherton, Amy Atherton and Winifred Stribling of Pleasanton - Lynnewood UMC. Jeanne Runner-Arth of San Diego - First UMC
8) Multi-Church Team to Fiji: August 11-25
Team leaders Judith Church and Virisila Batiratu will lead 8 volunteers to serve in Fiji. They include Katherine Kim, Emma Kolb, Sandra Metzger, Gordon Metzger, Nancy O'Bryon, Beverly Schier, Procsy Vadao and Judith Potor.
9) Care-A-Vaners construction team works in Mt. Shasta, CA: August 30 – Sept. 8
Rod and Gloria Castor head up yet another group of nomadic volunteers who will go in mission, living out of their RVs while working on light construction and repair projects throughout the California-Nevada Conference. The Care-A-Vaners have worked this year at Laton UMC, The East Salinas Family Center. Mt Shasta and other locations this year—give us a call if you want to join them in this work.
We also lift up in prayer those affected by the recent ice flooding in Alaska near the Yukon River. We pray for the inspiration of volunteers to serve and the safety for all in their recovery effort.
* EDGE OUTREACH - TRAINING FOR THOSE CALLED TO SERVE IN CLEAN WATER HEALTH MINISTRY
As you probably are aware, the current greatest avenue for providing compassionate care for people's physical needs is through water.. Right now, a child dies every 15 seconds due to water and sanitation issues. If you join us in addressing this need, we will save many lives, while opening countless hearts to the Gospel.
Our goal at
EDGE OUTREACH is to train ordinary missionaries in sustainable WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Health/Hygiene) solutions with which they can empower indigenous people to care for themselves in a way that has a lasting, transformational impact on the community, physically and spiritually. The most comprehensive training for this is available at our
International Water Conference, which takes place October 15th-17th.
With classroom instruction and plenty of hands-on training, participants will leave confidently in their abilities to, conduct community assessment and water testing, perform purification, utilize filtration options and methods (including biosand), address sanitation issues, provide health/hygiene education. and deal competently with cultural concerns. Like-minded missionaries from all over the world will receive this training together. At night, people gather around a campfire and share stories of what God is doing on every continent, providing great encouragement and new ideas and approaches for their missionary brethren.
The conference is heavy-duty training designed to equip even people with no previous experience in water to be able to provide effective solutions, and to be able to pass those solutions on to others. The best part is that the indigenous people are able to operate the systems themselves with ease. We also have on-demand training to meet more time-sensitive needs. Imagine a simple, sustainable, high-capacity water purifier installed in a church by a few simple missionaries. The pastor runs it, filling containers with pure water for the community.
The community shares stories of greater health and the love of the people who provided this gift. People who would never approach a church will come for the pure water, and can receive the Living Water of Christ as they do. You can check out our
guide to water purification in mission work by filling out the form; it explains how the process works.We also do
hand-pump repair conferences. There are hundreds of thousands of broken hand pumps in Haiti, Africa, and the rest of the world that would be usable if given a simple repair (a little piece of leather wears out).
If you teach the indigenous people how to repair them, you will provide water for the thirsty and have a tremendous impact. Aside from the big October Conference, we are also holding water conferences in California Feb 19-20 2010, and in St. Louis in April of 2010. The NLI Purifier:It's a small unit designed for use with the poorest of the poor. It kills all bacteria and viruses in a tank/body of water. It runs off of a car battery and table salt (you can recharge the battery using electricity or a solar panel, if necessary). The instructions for operation were tested on middle school children to ensure that they were easy.
The possibilities for its use in church planting, medical work, community outreach, disaster, relief, etc. are near endless.Put one of these in a church with a couple of storage tanks, and you dramatically expand the church's outreach. It can easily scale up to whatever the needs of the community (up to providing water for 10,000 people).
