Mission U
News
By Liz RooksMission u is a cooperative event sponsored by the United Methodist Women and the Creative Ministries Team and is open to men and woman (young or old), and all children and youth. Classes are available for Children (Kindergarten through 6th grade); Youth (7th through 12th grade); Young Adult (18 through 30 years of age) and Adult Classes. Child care is provided for infants through age 5. Ages are as of Sept 2015. Child care workers and Children and Youth study leaders are Safe Sanctuaries trained.
Three adult study courses are offered: a spiritual growth study, an issue study, and a geographic study. All adults will attend the spiritual growth study, Created for Happiness: Understanding Your Life in God and will choose between the issue study: The Church and People with Disabilities or the geographic study: Latin America: People of Faith. The young adults will be participating in the spiritual growth and geographic studies.
The Children’s study is Latin America: A Mission Study for Children. The children will reflect on Latin America using passages about Sarah and Abraham, the encounter of Jesus with children, the parable of the sower, and the Feast of the Pentecost.
The Youth study is Latin America: Country, Culture, and Faith: A Mission Study for Youth. The study looks at Latin America life, customs, culture, young people, geography, and liturgical practices that will help youth increase their understanding of what life is like for Latin American youth who are working toward a better world.
Created for Happiness: Understanding Your Life in God, the spiritual growth study, will help us understand happiness and how to live the life that God calls us to live amongst all we hear and see from magazines, books, websites, etc.
The Church and People with Disabilities, the issue study, covers topics ranging from biblical perspectives to overviews of living with and adapting to varying disabilities and offers ways to model inclusion of everyone in all tasks.
Latin America: People and Faith, the geographic study is an invitation to enter the area called Latin America (which is made up of a number of countries) knowing it is a sacred land. We come in with respect to face the dignity of a people and with the love of God for them.
A new feature this year for four day attendees is the addition of a Thursday afternoon class.
Two Focus Groups on Friday morning will feature Kathy Moss and Ann L. Joyner. Kathy will share about her 2014 mission trip to Nicaragua and Ann will be discussing her book, Not Worth Saving, the story of how a church reached out to help their family and their developmentally handicapped son.
Hands on Mission are a regular part of Mission u. This year our projects will be helping make shoes for children in Uganda to protect their feet from being affected by parasites that burrow into the skin causing severe health issues. Participants will be cutting out the pieces needed for the insides of the shoes which will then be sent to Uganda for shoemakers to assemble into finished shoes. This is a project suitable for children through adults. The second project will be recycling t-shirts into usable bags. These projects are available to be worked on during anyone’s free time. Please see link below for United Methodist Women for more details on these projects.
An Ingathering is another favorite aspect of Mission u. This year’s ingathering will focus on school supplies for Mission, Service, and Justice (formerly Office of Creative Ministries). Attendees are encouraged to bring new pencils with erasers, 2” erasers, medium point ink pins, boxes of 24 count crayons, pencil holders, 12” rulers, child-sized metal scissors, folders with pockets, and spiral or tape bound notebooks (70 count pages).
Saturday evening sees our “Celebration” which is planned and presented by the Children and Youth. They will be assisted by the Iglesia Luterana Amigos De Cristo Church Youth musical group, a Hispanic group from Sedalia. The group will be with the children and youth on Saturday afternoon sharing with them of their culture and heritage.
For more information contact Liz Rooks, Mission u dean, earooks@charter.net, by phone at 660-281-3333 or go to www.moumethodist.org/pages/detail/895.