United Methodist Church (UMC) of Geneva will hold a group blessing Sunday, July 2, for 42 youth and adults headed to a Kentucky service project.
The blessing will take place during Sunday worship at the Church, online and in-person at 9 a.m. at 211 Hamilton Street in Geneva. The service airs live on the Church website and YouTube and is posted later to Facebook.
Volunteers, 30 youth and 12 adults, will gather for an early group photo Saturday, July 8. Then they will ride in a carpool in six 15-passenger vans to Breathitt County, Ky., for a week of painting, digging drainage ditches, building porches, fixing roofs, and building wheelchair ramps.
Julie Popplewell, GUMC director of children, youth and family ministries, is project coordinator. She said the effort is the Church’s 40th annual partnership with Appalachia Service Project (ASP), a Johnson City, Tenn.-nonprofit that serves Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
Popplewell said, “We will be rehabbing six houses in the Appalachian mountains with ASP. This is a great way to create memories, eat PB and J sandwiches and ice cream, work up a sweat and get up to 40 service hours!”
Volunteers will be housed at an elementary school in Breathitt, sleeping on cots and air mattresses in a gymnasium.
ASP lines up local volunteers to cook meals Sunday evening through Friday evening.
GUMC volunteers contributed $350 each for transportation. Group fundraisers included selling chocolate-covered strawberries for Valentines day, a chili cook-off and a meat sale with Country Village Meats, where CVM donated a portion of the proceeds.
Additionally, Popplewell said, congregants contributed donations for donuts served after worship services and some members sponsored individual participants.
—Al Benson