{#GivingTuesday 2016} International Leaders

Since The Advance will not be offering any matching funds for Giving Tuesday this year, the UMVIM, SEJ Staff and Board has come together and pledged $12,000 to be used as matching fund. So, on November 29: #GivingTuesday 2016, donations will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $12,000. We believe our mission is big, and we also believe that we can't send trained, equipped volunteers into the field to show Christian Love in Action without the support of our community. 

This year, learn more from those who have personally experienced the impact of all UMVIM has to offer. Lisa Williams, Global Ministries missionary serving in Belize, shares the impact of UMVIM volunteers.

How do volunteers help you carry out your mission as a missionary?

In Belize, there are great needs for teams in repairing, adding on to and building Methodist Schools. The government depends on the churches to provide most of the school buildings in the country. Volunteers bring resources and encouragement; however, the relational part of our ministry is the most important impact. But what is most needed is spiritual understanding, renewal and growth.

What differences do you see in teams whose leaders have been trained by UMVIM, SEJ?

I see more cultural awareness and a better understanding of “do’s and dont's” in the teams with UMVIM trained team leaders. There is also less straying off the “path” of what they are supposed to be doing. I want to think that there seems to be more team cohesiveness in teams that come with trained leaders. We always want to encourage teams to meet, bond and study cultural differences in advance of when they come. That doesn’t always happen, especially with conference teams where the team members may not even see each other until the actual trip. Thankfully, the Belizeans are very familiar with US culture and are most forgiving of our various cultural "faux pas". During our (Belize/Honduras District of the MCCA) annual conference in January of 2016, we discussed UMVIM team leader training, and it was decided that we will no longer accept teams without a properly trained UMVIM team leader.

Share a brief story about the impact of volunteers.

One example of seeing the long term impact is a group from Lost Creek UMC in Oklahoma. This church group has been coming to Corozal, Belize every year for 14 years now. They bring a huge group (not what we usually recommend) and divide up into 3 subgroups. They run two very high quality Bible Schools at two of our schools and also a youth sports camp. Largely because of this team and the impact they have left, we have children and youth that seem to really understand the love of Christ. For the same reason, Corozal Methodist Church has a youth group that meets year around. 

On November 29: #GivingTuesday 2016, donations will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $12,000. Please give generously to Advance #901875.

{#GivingTuesday 2016} International Leaders

Since The Advance will not be offering any matching funds for Giving Tuesday this year, the UMVIM, SEJ Staff and Board has come together and pledged $12,000 to be used as matching fund. So, on November 29: #GivingTuesday 2016, donations will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $12,000. We believe our mission is big, and we also believe that we can't send trained, equipped volunteers into the field to show Christian Love in Action without the support of our community. 

This year, learn more from those who have personally experienced the impact that UMVIM has made. The National Coordinator for UMVIM-Cuba, Aldo Gonzalez, shares how UMVIM volunteers have built relationships with the church and people of Cuba. 

How do volunteers help you carry out your mission with the Cuban Methodist Church?

25 years ago, a group of UMVIM representatives went to Cuba and established a relationship between the Church in Cuba, the government in Cuba and UMVIM whereby groups of volunteers could go and assist the church in Cuba to rebuild their churches and parsonages.

Ever since that time, every month groups of United Methodist Volunteers in Mission have traveled to Cuba and have participated in rebuilding the infrastructure of the church there.  They assisted in the building of Camp Canaan, a place large enough where the church in Cuba can meet for their annual conferences and educational opportunities.  We have assisted in building a Methodist Seminary in Havana that has offered the opportunity for 100s of pastors to get their credentials and degrees to better do the work of the church.  Hundreds of churches have been refurbished and many more have been built.  Volunteers have not only traveled and worked alongside our Cuban Methodists brothers and sisters, but have also assisted the church with needed funds to be able to do their work.

What differences do you see in teams whose leaders have been trained by UMVIM, SEJ?

The work in Cuba is different than many others places where UMVIM works.  So it has been extremely important that one of the prerequisites of leading a team to Cuba is to be trained through UMVIM training programs.  It is through this program that many leaders learn, among other things, how to establish relationships with our hosts, and how to deal with the cultural differences we encounter.

Share a brief story about the impact of volunteers.

The true impact of our volunteer teams is often seen in the pure simple gifts a team member offers.  Let me tell you a story about one of our volunteers during a trip to Cuba.  We were helping to build a new church and parsonage in a town where there had never been a Methodist church before. The new church had been meeting under a tree and enjoying very lively and upbeat worship.  Strained relations had developed with their neighbors who weren’t happy to have a church built next door or with the noise from their very lively services.  All of this was unknown to our volunteer friend, who every morning when we arrived at the worksite, proceeded to greet the neighbors and to share with them her affections. She would join them on their porch for coffee and conversation, even though she did not speak Spanish!  Eventually the whole team joined her every morning for this ritual.  By the end of the week we had made new friends, the pastor of the church was able to talk directly with the neighbors, hear their complaints, mitigate some of their concerns and invite them to church!  This is just one of many surprising ways that grace manifests itself in our volunteer teams, through each person with their particular gifts offered for the healing of the world.

On November 29: #GivingTuesday 2016, donations will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $12,000. Please give generously to Advance #901875.

{#GivingTuesday 2016} Disaster Response

Since The Advance will not be offering any matching funds for Giving Tuesday this year, the UMVIM, SEJ Staff and Board has come together and pledged $12,000 to be used as matching fund. So, on November 29: #GivingTuesday 2016, donations will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $12,000. We believe our mission is big, and we also believe that we can't send trained, equipped volunteers into the field to show Christian Love in Action without the support of our community. 

This year, learn more from those who have personally experienced the impact of all UMVIM has to offer. We asked South Carolina Early Response Team Coordinator, Billy Robinson to share about his experience.

How do volunteers help you carry out your mission as the coordinator of Early Response Teams in South Carolina? 

We in South Carolina, like most everywhere, are all volunteers. Without volunteers we would have no Early Response Teams, and we would miss out on so many dire needs and opportunities to allow God's love to flow through us in our actions, care, love and concern for others. Coordinating disaster response is chaotic, especially in the early stages of any disaster such as our October 2015 floods and recent tropical storm Hermine. It is the same in emergency response like my paid profession as a Fire Officer/Paramedic. It is vital to have people who will fill in leadership positions and coordinate responses in regional locations, especially in large scale disasters. Without them and all the other wonderful volunteers and support across UMVIM and the United Methodist Church, it would be impossible. Volunteers are the backbone of all we do: helping with training (we have eight UMCOR Trainers); preparing and maintaining our seven ERT Trailers; providing leadership as team leaders  and regional coordinators and participating on our state ERT Board; Of course, volunteers are the hard working dedicated people who put tarps on roofs, run chainsaws and muck out while always being listeners across South Carolina, the southeast, and the entire United States. A South Carolina ERT team recently came back from Louisiana.

What differences do you see in teams whose leaders have been trained by UMVIM, SEJ? 

We require our leaders to be trained through UMVIM & ERT. This gives them a firm foundation of expectations and quality management that we expect out of them and their teams. It instills in them the true Christian values and attitudes that we expect them and their team members to put forth at all times.

Share a brief story about the impact of volunteers. 

During our South Carolina "1 in 1000-year flood" of October 2015, we quickly became overwhelmed especially across the midlands to the coast. One of the hardest hit areas was the Charleston/Summerville area. I immediately called out to Troy Thomas, who is our Low Country ERT Coordinator (our state is divided in four regions, and we have an ERT Coordinator and two Assistants in each). He already had volunteers out helping people on day one and continued coordinating ERT efforts for three months among various agencies and organizations plus teams coming in to South Carolina from other states. His wife, Renee, was instrumental in helping get teams housed and taken care of. Troy also performed his paid job as an officer with Mount Pleasant Fire Department on the days he was not doing muck outs, and he let his secondary construction business lapse for the three-month period.

Many times we do not see the impact or fruits of our labor, but Troy saw it first hand in a man named Peter. Peter was a big man that was angered that his home was flooded and no one had made it out to help him. He also had very little to do with the church or Christians. He flagged Troy down in the street and told him that he needed help. Troy turned to see Peter's flooded home with water still up to the windows. As soon as the floodwaters subsided Troy was able to send a team of 32 people in to help Peter. Peter began to see the love, care and compassion of Jesus Christ through the ERT volunteers' witness of "Christian Love In Action" including their intensive labor to muck out his home. At the end of the day, they all gathered together in a circle in the street in front of Peter's home to pray. During the prayer, Peter broke down to his knees and with the ERT gathered around him, he gave his life to Jesus Christ!

We even saw volunteers cross state, district and conference lines to help. In the Pee Dee Region (Georgetown to Myrtle Beach) of our state, the ERT Coordinator, Rev. Ken Phelps, was land locked for three days due to roadways and bridges being washed out. So, Rev. George Olive of Surfside Beach helped coordinate ERT efforts and provide assessments along with Ann Huffman and others from North Carolina ERT until Ken could get freed. They continued to assist Ken for months due to the widespread damage. 

On November 29: #GivingTuesday 2016, donations will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $12,000. Please give generously to Advance #901875.

{#GivingTuesday 2016} Disaster Response

Since The Advance will not be offering any matching funds for Giving Tuesday this year, the UMVIM, SEJ Staff and Board has come together and pledged $12,000 to be used as matching fund. So, on November 29: #GivingTuesday 2016, donations will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $12,000. We believe our mission is big, and we also believe that we can't send trained, equipped volunteers into the field to show Christian Love in Action without the support of our community. 

This year, learn more from those who have personally experienced the impact of all UMVIM has to offer. We asked Virginia Long-Term Recovery Manager & UMVIM Coordinator Forrest White to share what UMVIM has meant to him:

How do volunteers help you carry out your mission with Virginia Disaster Recovery?

At the end of my e-mails I often include these words: Our challenge is big. But God is bigger! We’re in this together and, best of all, God is with us. It’s true. We are in this together. There is no small part to play on our team. Since Long-Term Recovery began in the Virginia Conference in June, we have seen Christian love in action (1 John 3:18) from the people who occupy the back row of the local church and those who occupy the highest positions in the Conference and every person in between. Who could forget the high school students from North Carolina who wanted to plant flowers in a survivor's yard, a symbol of hope, a reminder of God's love? Who could forget the children of from a Richmond UMC who traveled an hour one way to provide lunch for two work teams and took leftovers to survivors? Who could forget the young at heart folks from a half dozen James River District churches who say they're too old to climb up on a roof but lovingly prepared a feast to feed 100 on a July afternoon? Who could forget Bishop Cho, so close to retirement, scurrying up a ladder to encourage a roofing team, as those on the ground held our breath?                   

What differences do you see in teams whose leaders have been trained by UMVIM, SEJ?

There simply is no comparison. Simply put, trained team leaders see the big picture. They understand that Christian Love in Action doesn't begin when a team walks on the work site and it doesn't end when a team walks off the work site. They understand that it's always about the people first, the project second. They understand the importance of good communication before, during, and after the actual mission experience. On a personal note, I had led about two dozen mission teams before I had the UMVIM TLT in 2007. I was a far more effective leader on the two dozen mission teams I led after the training.

Share a brief story about the impact of volunteers – we really like the one about Miss Patty.

I wish I’d never met Patty Bryant. I told her so, too. We met only because of her great loss. The tornado that ripped through Evergreen, Virginia, on February 24, somewhere around 3:30 p.m., took her home and her greenhouse. But it took so much more. Her daddy died in the storm. They didn’t find his body until after nightfall, three football fields away from where he sat watching an old TV Western as the storm jumped the railroad tracks and engulfed his home.

I asked Ms. Patty how she was doing, five months after her life changed forever. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’ve been trying to keep it together because of mama.” Her mama survived the storm, only because she wasn’t home. She was turning off of Highway 460, only a couple miles away, when the mighty winds uprooted a tree and slammed it into her car. The impact fractured her back. The rescue team cut her free from the wreckage. As for Ms. Patty? She wonders if she would still be alive if she hadn’t left for work about an hour earlier than usual that dark February day, about an hour before the storm hit.                                                     

Hope is rising on the ground the storm swept clean.                                                                        

In the final days of summer, volunteers from two Virginia United Methodist Churches dug the footers on the land where her house once stood. In the first days of fall, volunteers four Greensboro, N.C., churches put the concrete block foundation on the land where her house once stood. And so it has been, one team at a time, one day at a time, and so it will be until we turn the keys to a new house over to Ms. Patty. That day will come because ordinary people stepped up when our extraordinary God called and said, “Here I am, send me.”

On November 29: #GivingTuesday 2016, donations will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $12,000. Please give generously to Advance #901875.

UMCOR’s Disaster Response Plan for Haiti

Below is a letter we received from the United Methodist Committee on Relief regarding assistance from international teams to Haiti in response to Hurricane Matthew. UMVIM, SEJ will communicate the needs for teams to deploy or send resources as soon as we have word from UMCOR that it is appropriate to do so.  

Azim Akhtar, UMCOR Haiti’s Head of Mission is experienced in humanitarian assistance. He and the rest of the UMCOR Haiti staff are already at work responding to this current disaster through an UMCOR grant that will provide emergency water and food rations, cooking pots, and other emergency supplies as needed.

One of our primary partners in Haiti over the last six years has been EMH, the Eglise Methodist d’Haiti (Methodist Church of Haiti). Through UMCOR’s support, EMH has already begun to provide food to the survivors of the hurricane. In the coming weeks, UMCOR will continue to explore and develop with EMH additional humanitarian responses.

One of our important attributes of mission in the United Methodist Church is our fervent willingness to volunteer. Local volunteerism is key to connecting the church and the community. The Volunteers in Mission program provides opportunities for volunteers to assist with long-term development, building projects, medical missions, and other activities. In Haiti, volunteer teams from throughout the US have helped build the infrastructure of the church there for decades. 

Because of the strong commitment these partner churches and annual conferences have with specific churches, communities, and districts in Haiti, their hearts have been broken as they have watched reports of damage and loss in the communities to which they have given so much time, energy, and resources. Because of this commitment, many of these partners have selflessly declared their willingness to go now to Haiti to assess damage and discover how they can help. While this level of dedication is admirable, UMCOR is strongly advising that such groups wait until Haiti has fully transitioned from the relief phase to the recovery phase.

In the meantime, visits by teams, even individuals or small teams, would run the risk of doing more harm than good. Well-intentioned volunteers generally and unknowingly take energy and resources from host organizations which they would otherwise use to manage or support humanitarian assistance activities. From a support and logistics standpoint, volunteering in the US is very different from volunteering in other countries. Finally, one of the side benefits of many disaster response activities is that local people are hired and materials, as much as possible are procured locally. For the reasons stated above, and because we have full confidence in our staff on the ground, visiting Haiti at this time would be inappropriate.

When recovery projects for volunteers become appropriate and available, UMVIM teams will be informed through the jurisdictional UMVIM Coordinators, under the guidance of Una Jones, Global Ministries’ Director of Mission Volunteers.

Summer of Service: 2016 Intern Rives Worsham

In 2012, UMVIM, SEJ rolled out an internship program for college students who display strong leadership skills and value the importance of mission work. We believe that empowering the next generation of the UMC is one of the best ways to keep our mission going strong for years to come. We were so fortunate to welcome Rives Worsham as our intern for 2016. Continue reading below to learn the valuable roles Rives played across the UMC connection, and how this experience has helped shape him as a leader.

UMVIM, SEJ HQ in Birmingham, Alabama
All of our interns kick off their summer at our office in Birmingham. They get to know our staff, our structure, and our mission, while also going through UMVIM team leader training and ERT Disaster Response training.

"It was interesting to learn about the structure of the entire United Methodist Church. I knew very little about the structure of the church when I got there, but by the time I left, I felt capable of having legitimate conversations about it. I also loved receiving all of the UMVIM and ERT training. It made me feel like I would be able to help others whenever and wherever I am needed."

Domestic Placement: Obion County, Tennessee
Our interns spend the next couple weeks of their summer in their domestic placements, usually within the Southeastern Jurisdiction. Rives served alongside ReelFoot Rural Ministries in Obion, Tennessee.

"I was really surprised by how much I fell in love with the small community. One of the biggest things I learned there was that there is plenty of work to be done here at home, you don’t have to travel abroad to find people in need. Obion County seemed to be overlooked and forgotten by the rest of the county, but they were such a welcoming community and they just needed a little help. RRM was awesome because they are involved in so much. I was able to work with elderly citizens, do construction in the community, supply food to those in need, pick up furniture for the thrift shop, do manual labor around the property, and work some with youth groups who volunteered there. I saw God in the staff who worked constantly to help those who seemed to have been forgotten by everyone else, and I hope that I can work with them again in the future."

International Placement: San Isidro, Costa Rica
Rives' final stop saw his return to Costa Rica to work again with Costa Rica Mission Projects. Rives traveled there in 2013 with his youth group, and enjoyed getting his hands dirty once again!

"This was an amazing experience for me. A big thing I took away from this part of the internship is that the body of Christ doesn’t just live in America. We have brothers and sisters in Christ taking communion with us and worshiping with us all over the world. Short-term mission teams are meant to connect us with our Christian family, they aren’t just about the work. It is important for Christians to send out mission teams not just to do labor but to live out what it means to be part of an international body of Christ. I really enjoyed the work I did there, from making sidewalks to building bathrooms, but what I enjoyed the most was the lasting friendships I made with the people down there."


Looking Ahead
Rives just began his sophomore year at Virginia Military Institute, and continues to play soccer for them. He has already been able to take his experiences from the summer and have meaningful conversations with people back home, and has plans to be an UMVIM team leader in the future, and possibly even more.

"My new knowledge about the church also opens up a variety of paths from long term missionary to pastor. I feel like a lot of doors were opened for me and I look forward to exploring a lot of different paths over the next few years. It was definitely a life changing experience."

Please join our staff as we continue to pray for Rives, that the Lord will continue to make his path straight and clear. We know this young man has an incredibly bright future serving Christ and the world around him.