We now have a Facebook presence for Outreach Ministry.  We hope this will provide another venue where we can better connect with one another as we proclaim the love of Jesus in the world through our missional community of the North Carolina Conference.  We also hope it will be a place of celebration of the many ways you share and participate in connectional mission; a space where we might continue to remind one another of God’s amazing love, particularly for the poor and vulnerable; and a point of journey where we might discover more of the many possibilities for joining in the mission and justice of the Way of Jesus.   We invite you to join us there as a friend and participate in our mission of disciple-making and transforming God’s world into that place we so often pray for, “On earth as it is in heaven.”  Please also extend this invitation to your other Facebook friends.

Nancy Van Antwerp, our Deaconess recently appointed to the North Carolina Conference and serving with the Mission Team, will be our Facebook page administrator.   We are grateful for her service.  So, please join Nancy and our other friends over at Outreach Ministry of the NC Conference of the UMC on Facebook! 

Updated:  5-07-2013 at 12:45 PM

Hurricane Irene Recovery

Waves break over railings of a home’s raised deck. Storm surges were up to 8 feet in some areas.

The NC Conference continues to have an on-going operation for disaster recovery.  Over 27,000 homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Irene in August 2011.  We have hundreds who remain unable to move back into heavily damaged or destroyed homes.  We have deep need for work teams to do both repair/reconstruction and new construction.  The NC Conference disaster recovery call center can place your team in an area where people continue to desperately need your help.   We have had over 350 teams respond and we need many, many more.  We are deeply grateful for the efforts and gifts of these wondrous servants.  We have been staggered by the generosity of those who have responded in such manner.   Please join us.  Your efforts will make a difference.

Anyone wanting to volunteer should email disasterresponse@nccumc.org or call 888-440-9167.

We continue to need additional funds for the recovery work.  Please also consider reaching out financially by giving to NC Storms Emergency Response – NC Advance #S-00176. 100% of every gift to this Advance will go to storm response.  You can give online at:  Hurricane Irene Giving

You can also send funds to:  NC Conference, P.O. Box 60053, Charlotte, NC 28260.  Please be sure to note Advance #S-00176.

— Steve Taylor/Outreach Team Coordinator

Wil and Yolanda

Greetings from Costa Rica!  We hope that this update finds all of you doing well.  In January we started work on our first project of 2013.  We’re building two Sunday school classrooms, a church kitchen and a battery of bathrooms at the church in Pavones.  The congregation has been forced to meet for the last three months under a tarp in front of the parsonage because the existing facilities were not up to the Health Ministry’s specifications.  We have already re-wired … Read More at Costa Rica Mission Projects. 

Waves break over the railing of a raised deck as Hurricane Irene storm surge flows inland, flooding, damaging, or destroying thousands of NC homes.

North Carolina United Methodists, more than most, understand the pain and suffering that our friends to the north experienced from Hurricane Sandy.   In response, United Methodists across the NC Conference have donated tens of thousands of dollars and have shipped thousands of cleaning buckets.   Additionally, as the response phase moves into long-term recovery, we are certain that many will feel the call of God to go and stand with our friends in New York, New Jersey, Delaware  and other devastated areas.

As we pray and respond to the disaster north of us, we also remember that here in North Carolina, many of our next-door neighbors continue to suffer the affects of Hurricane Irene.   Several hundred volunteer work teams, United Methodists and many other denominations, have assisted in our recovery efforts and we have completed repairs on over 200 homes.  For this we give God deep thanks, and we NEED several hundred more work teams and monetary donations to continue the work on over 350 more homes or build new homes, with families who desperately need our help.

Home with internal walls washed away from Irene storm surge.

So, as we pray for and respond to the needs of our neighbors north of us, let us also join with our neighbors here in North Carolina who continue to live inside the disaster that is Hurricane Irene.   As Jesus tells us, when we minister to those who are in such deep need, it is Jesus himself to whom we minister … and Jesus will in turn, minister to us.

To help, please contact Ann Huffman at the NC Disaster Call Center – 888-440-9167 or: disasterresponse@nccumc.org to schedule a work team for a day, a week or longer.

We continue to need additional funds for the recovery work.  Please also consider reaching out financially by giving to NC Storms Emergency Response – NC Advance #S-00176. 100% of every gift to this Advance will go to storm response.  You can give online at:  Hurricane Irene Giving

You can also send funds to:  NC Conference, P.O. Box 60053, Charlotte, NC 28260.  Please be sure to note Advance #S-00176.

Be the hands and feet and heart and voice of Jesus, Be the light!  Help our neighbors return home.  

We have begun receiving calls and emails regarding possible material donations for those victims of Hurricane Sandy and also generous servants wishing to go to the disaster zone and serve.

Our first advice is this:  If you are not trained and certified in Early Response, please do not go to the disaster area at this time.  In many places you will not be allowed to enter the affected areas and if you do get in, the area could pose significant danger to you.

This is the information as listed on the NY Conference Disaster Center website:

NY Conference UMC Disaster Response Coordinator: Rev. Joseph Ewoodzie

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This information is from the New Jersey state website: