Working Together for the Lord

As most of you know, for the past couple of months we've been collecting donated items to raise funds for this year's Vacation Bible School (VBS) and the NAOMI House Summer Missions team. Two Saturdays ago, we packed up all the donations received for the past 7 weeks and delivered them to Savers Thrift Store in Arcadia. A small army of about 30 people helped sort, pack, and load over 6000 pounds of clothes, bags, toys, books, housewares, and other items for Savers. In return, we received over $1200 from Savers which met our $1000 VBS fundraising goal and raised some money for the NAOMI House team. Praise the Lord! Additional funds were also raised from the Boba and Bake Sale that weekend. Here are some pictures from that weekend.

Thank you to everyone that donated items or came out to help on that Saturday or supported the Boba and Bake Sale. It was truly a team effort! We're blessed to be able to raise money for important things like VBS and Missions but some of the greatest satisfaction comes simply from working together. It was wonderful to see English and Nichigo members working together, new people working side-by-side with long-time members, and the young people leading and serving in different ways. I thought it was a great representation of the different parts of the "body" working together as one for the Lord. As it says in I Corinthians 12:12, "Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ." Then Paul goes on to describe how the body works together as one.

Praise God for all that took place that weekend! May God give us other opportunities in the future to roll up our sleeves and work together for the good of others and His ministry.

Pastor Darren