Wednesday
10:30 AM Rite I Holy Eucharist, Markley Chapel
Wednesday
10:30 AM Rite I Holy Eucharist, Markley Chapel
Between June 21st and 25th Christ Church had 32 youth, 3 church staff, and 10 adult parishioners partnering with 9 Greenville organizations to learn about healthy relationships, food scarcity, homelessness, early literacy, and environmental stewardship. We partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Harvest Hope Food Bank, Triune Mercy Center, The Salvation Army, Greenville Homeless Alliance (GHA), The city of Greenville’s “Let’s make Greenville... Cleanville” Campaign, Greenville First Steps, The Book Distribution Project of Christ Church, and Annie’s House of Sustaining Way.
We were so excited to be able to offer Mission Week for the first time, especially after a year of being apart. We learned so much about our community and each other along the way.
We are extremely thankful for our lay leaders and the passion and knowledge they brought about each of our daily topics and our community.
We also were excited to tie in some education about financial stewardship by donating all the money collected in the youth registration fees directly to the organizations we partnered with throughout the week!
The story was picked up by the City of Greenville and The Greenville News.
Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNf_41nbXfw
Read the story here: https://www.greenvilleonline.c...
Keep reading to learn about each day’s activities and highlights!
Topic: Healthy Relationships
Organization: National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
Activity: A representative from NAMI led us through the Ending the Silence Training and led us in a conversation about what self-care really means. Since our topic of the day was healthy relationships, we also focused on building healthy relationships with each other! This included things like ice breakers, games, and a communication obstacle course. We finished off our day with tie-dying pillowcases for our partnership with Salvation Army on Wednesday.
Highlight: Youth sharing specific facts they learned during the Ending the Silence training and watching youth guide their partners through the “mine field” part of the communication obstacle course.
Topic: Food Scarcity
Organization: Harvest Hope Food Bank
Activity: The middle school group packed food boxes for Harvest Hope’s mobile food distribution and the high school group sorted through donations Harvest Hope received and made sure they were able to be distributed by checking expiration dates.
Highlight: The middle school group discussed what type of meals you would be able to prepare with the food they packed into boxes, and we got a few rounds of Heads Up 7 Up in during our breaks!
Topic: Homelessness
Organizations: Triune Mercy Center, The Salvation Army of Greenville, Greenville Homeless Alliance (GHA), The City of Greenville’s “Let’s Make Greenville... Cleanville” Campaign
Activity: The morning started at Triune Mercy where we learned about the ministries of Triune Mercy Center, The Salvation Army of Greenville, and the Greenville Homeless Alliance. We then helped Triune Mercy with their grounds and by putting bibles and hymnals back in the pews! On our walk to Salvation Army of Greenville we helped the City of Greenville with the “Let’s Make Greenville...Cleanville” Campaign by picking up all sorts of trash along the road. At Salvation Army we looked at the numbers of families experiencing homelessness within Greenville County Schools and participated in simulation of what it would be like to ask for assistance at various organizations around Greenville.
Highlight: The group learned about families experiencing homelessness at their own schools! The numbers were much higher than we expected!
Topic: Education and Early Literacy
Organizations: Greenville First Steps, The Book Distribution Project of Christ Church
Activity: We split into three groups and worked our way through three different service activities! The first station was working at the Book Distribution Project of Christ Church to help the organization organize, stamp, and pack books to be distributed to the Greenville community. At the second station youth recorded themselves reading children’s books so the videos can be distributed to childcare centers for children to listen to new voices reading them stories! The final station was building Little Free Libraries that are being put all over Greenville, two of which are on Christ Church property!
Highlight: Using power tools to build the Little Free Libraries!
Topic: Environmental Stewardship
Organization: Annie’s House of Sustaining Way
Activity: After a tour of the Annie’s House property we helped in the garden by weeding, mulching, spreading compost, planting seeds for crops like peanuts, squishing bugs, and helping harvest produce.
Highlight: Youth were able to try fruits and vegetables that were grown in the garden like plums, blueberries, blackberries, and cucumbers. We learned all sorts of new facts about things like compost and chickens.
10 North Church Street Greenville, SC 29601
