www.hope4agape.com

Agape provides critical housing and life skills that empower women and their children to transform from crisis and poverty to self-sustaining, fulfilling lives. Custer Road holds an annual collection of personal and household items and provides monetary donations and volunteers.

Bed Start helps households in poverty, crisis and/or need by providing household furnishing at NO COST!

If you need assistance, please complete the REQUEST FORM on Bed Start’s website at www.bedstart.org.

You can help by donating your time, your talents, financial support as well as gently used furniture. Did you know that Bed Start needs help from people serving every week? And did you know that they need more help than just delivering beds on Saturday mornings? Regardless of your activity level, Bed Start could use your help.

How to serve with Bed Start:Go to www.bedstart.org and complete a VOLUNTEER APPLICATION.
Every Wednesday Evening: 5pm Provide delivery on Wednesday evenings. Meet in the parking lot directly across the street from the church. All Wednesday night deliveries occur near the church. Every Saturday Morning: 7:45m-Noon (meet in the parking lot at 7:45am, depart CRUMC at 8am) Provide Pick-up and Delivery help on Saturday mornings. Meet in the parking lot directly across the street from the church. Deliveries are made around Collin County. A pick-up truck/trailer are helpful, but not required. Having a servant’s heart and helping with Bed Start has no age limit. Youth are welcome to join us! If you can love on families and have a strong heart for showing kindness to someone we are serving than we want your help. You don’t need a strong back to be able to help.

Monetary donations are also welcome to purchase beds and bedding. Donate online here, through Push Pay or make checks payable to Custer Road UMC, indicate Bed Start on the memo line, and place checks in the Offering Plate or send them to the church office.

To arrange a large furniture pick-up please complete the PICK-UP REQUEST FORM on the Bed Start website. Questions, please contact Doug Nickols via email at director@bedstart.org. We currently have a wait list of over 90 beds. Help make a difference in someone’s life this week! For more information, please go to: www.bedstart.org.

Volunteers are needed every Saturday, 8am to noon, to help with pick-up and delivery. This is an ongoing mission.

www.pised.edu/headstart

Imagine being a child who knows there will not be a gift under the Christmas tree. Imagine being a parent who is presently unable to provide warm clothing and food for the family. Last year Head Start families were sponsored by Sunday school classes, UMW groups, choirs, and Bible study groups as well as individual families. Head Start teachers have shared with us what an enormous difference the sponsors made in the lives of the families. Information about family members, a picture of the Head Start student, and sponsorship guidelines are provided to sponsors of the 146 children. The goal of Head Start is to bring about a greater degree of social competence in children.

No special training is needed, only a desire to intentionally build a relationship with a student. Typically, it is a 30 minute to 1 hour commitment during the lunch/recess time, but arrangements may be able to be made for after school mentoring as well.

We will also provide volunteers for Book Fairs, teacher meals and other volunteer opportunities requested by the schools. A Back to School Teacher Appreciation Breakfast will occur in August and we collect board games, Kleenex and hand sanitizer to replenish the classrooms.

Meals on Wheels provides hot noon meals to seniors who live alone, who are physically or cognitively unable to go to a grocery store or prepare a meal, or who are homebound. Custer Road UMC provides donations during the year and Harvest Boxes in the fall. Find out how to be a driver by clicking here.

This program provides support to young parents in the PISD school system. Custer Road sponsors the annual Christmas and graduation dinners, has as ongoing collection of diapers and new/gently-used baby items like clothes, formula, strollers, swings, car seats, high chairs and maternity clothes.

Project Transformation is a seven-week summer day camp for inner-city children that is facilitated by PT Corps Members and partner churches. About 100 corps members and many volunteers work with the children to teach Bible lessons, make crafts, play games, sing songs, write plays and read one-on-one. Custer Road UMC is a partner church and sponsors corps members, provides reading volunteers, and 2 dinners for the corps members. We also provide day camp supplies for one week.

SOS produces short skits, monologues and Reader’s Theater presentations to church social gatherings, children’s programs and retirement centers. The skits are 15-minute Reader’s Theater plays on aging and Christian principles. Mostly humorous, sometimes unintentional. Contact Betty Garst via email here for more information.

 In conjunction with Buckner International shoes are delivered by a mission team to orphanages in Peru. The mission trip in July will engage and build relationships with children and families while providing shoes and humanitarian aid in several different communities and orphanages. This includes a work project (home cleaning or remodel, bathroom completion etc.)in the communities where Buckner works through Family Hope Centers.

Put shoes on children and smiles on their faces. What child doesn’t love getting a new pair of shoes? New shoes are fun, clean, bright, and colorful! New shoes help a child run faster, jump higher, go further!

The spring and summer of 2020, Custer Road families will be able to share the joy of new shoes with children in Peru, through our partnership with Buckner International’s Shoes for Orphan Souls.

You can help by:

• Giving to the communion offering on March 1. The offering will be used to purchase new shoes and to send Custer Road members to Peru to deliver them.

• Bringing NEW Children’s sized shoes & socks to the Mission donation area and dropping them in the bin marked for Sharing Shoes & Joy in Peru anytime in March. NEW Athletic shoes are needed for children from birth to 18 years old.

• Attending a mission trip information session on March 1 at 11 a.m. in B3.

• Joining the team to deliver shoes to children in Peru July 23 – August 2. You’ll love seeing the smile on a child’s face when you put that new pair of shoes on them!

• Praying for the team who will deliver the shoes and the children who will receive them.

Not only are new shoes fun, they provide important benefits. Shoes protect against disease and infection. They allow children to attend school. They provide hope by demonstrating worth and God’s love to orphans and vulnerable children. And they help connect families to ministries that can transform their lives.

For more information on how you can help, contact Lanie Williams at laniew1983@gmail.com.

It is estimated that 500,000 Juarez residents live in poverty, about 37% of the population. Of these, approximately 62,000 live in “extreme poverty.”

Larry and Dr. Nancy Rodriguez Cox founded Juntos Servimos, a mission of healing and hope, in 2004. JS provides an individual response (including medical care, shelter, food and education) to the suffering experienced by people in the towns along the Mexico/US border. The work of JS is primarily in Matamoros, Mexico, however they are now reaching out to the El Paso/Juarez area to work with Proyecto Abrigo in Tierra Nueva, Mexico, a suburb of Juarez.

Rev. Jose Luis Portillo founded Proyecto Abrigo in 1996 in the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Since then, over 7,000 homes, two churches, a medical clinic, and a vocational school have been built to serve the poorer communities outside of Ciudad Juarez.

Imagine having nothing but dirty, bacteria-infested water to quench your thirst. To wash your clothes in. To cook with. To bathe in. And to give to your children to drink. No one should live this way. But more than 884 million people around the world do. Enough is enough. Because no human being should live this way.

That is why Pastor Kory and his wife, Jennifer, lead a trip of 12 church members in partnership with Living Water International in September 2016 to dig a water well in Rivas, Nicaragua. Read more about Pastor Kory’s trip to Nicaragua here.

A new team of twelve will travel to Guatemala November 4-11, 2017 to dig a water well. To get more information about this trip, contact Tony and Elizabeth Hairston via email here.

Living Water International is a Christian organization dedicated to helping communities acquire desperately needed clean water and to experience “living water”- the gospel of Jesus Christ – which alone satisfies the deepest thirst. Imagine a well – that WE PAY FOR AND BUILD WITH THE HANDS OF OUR OWN CHURCH MEMBERS – that will gush with clean, life-giving water and sustain generations for years to come.