Dear North Carolina Conference friends in mission,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ.
We celebrate over $75,000 in a record-breaking annual conference offering!
A total of $725,000 has been raised toward our goal of $1,000,000! We have $275,000 more to go to reach our pledge/goal.
Gray Southern, who with Apex UMC raised $12,000, told David Harvin at Annual Conference, “We can do more.” His words are a wonderful mantra for us all in the remaining months of 2015.
- We can do more—even if we have done a lot.
- We can do more—if we have done a little.
- We can do more—if we have not done anything. . .yet.
Thank you for organizing an effort in your congregation to participate even more fully in this ingathering so that children may live and so that malaria will be a historical memory.
Here are ten ways we can do more to end malaria. Use these suggestions or create your own path as a significant partner in imagining no malaria.
- Go to our web site, nccumc.org/imaginenomalaria, and download or order great posters, videos, and promotional materials. Distribute them throughout your church and Sunday schools.
- Take an offering for INM at Vacation Bible School. Take an offering at all our camps and retreats this summer.
- Encourage young people to participate: set up a lemonade stand, organize a bike ride or a walk, sell coffee before church services, have a bake sale, cut a music cd of the youth choir. Be Happy. Be Creative. All gifts are important.
- Set a goal of saving lives: Save 1000 lives for $10,000.
- Have a church-wide yard sale, antique fair, or talent show.
- If you have a harvest festival, tithe the funds raised for Imagine No Malaria.
- Same for Christmas tree sales, peanut sales, or any other products your church provides.
- Join the entire Conference in a focus on malaria during Advent. Do an Imagine No Malaria Christmas tree with $10 per ornament to save a life during the Christmas season.
- Connect with other churches in your area to do a larger-scale fund raiser.
- Give the gift of life and hope this Christmas, along the lines of “Whose birthday is it anyway?” Challenge people to spend as much on Imagine No Malaria as they do on Christmas gifts this year. Be sure to take a Christmas Offering for INM.
With gratitude to God for the joy of giving,
Hope Morgan Ward