Members of Bethlehem United Methodist Church, Bena, gathered in the church fellowship hall after services on Sunday, Oct. 27, to practice their ministry of care.

The congregation worked together to assemble cleaning kits for the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). Each kit contains materials suitable for cleaning a disaster-ravaged building, from a variety of cleaning products to respirator dust masks and insect repellent, all packed into a five-gallon plastic bucket.

Contents of the buckets and the buckets themselves were purchased with church funds and assembled following detailed instructions provided by UMCOR. The kits, aka “flood buckets,” are kept on hand in UMCOR storage facilities, ready for quick shipment to anywhere in the United States when disaster strikes.

Working in assembly line fashion, the volunteers completed 40 buckets in less than an hour. Bethlehem Pastor Chuck Winner took time to mention those who did the preparatory work that facilitated assembly, “shopping for materials and then organizing them in stations for packing.”

This was not the first assembly job for Bethlehem members. Consistent with their commitment to banishing food insecurity, members and friends of the church have hosted two food packing events for Rise Against Hunger, an international nonprofit agency.

The UMCOR project was an expansion of Bethlehem’s ministry to people in crisis, which focuses on banishing food insecurity. But John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, believed deeply in the importance of helping all those in need, regardless of the reason. In 1786 he wrote: “If those who ‘gain all they can,’ and ‘save all they can,’ will likewise ‘give all they can’; then, the more they gain, the more they will grow in grace, and the more treasure they will lay up in heaven.”

For information on UMCOR, visit umcmission.org. For more about Bethlehem UMC, which just celebrated its 150-year anniversary, call 804-642-5141.