To the editor:<br> Our church, Pine Street United Methodist, recently held our first community outreach dinner.

Saturday, July 21, 2001

To the editor:

Our church, Pine Street United Methodist, recently held our first community outreach dinner. We would now like to thank everyone who participated in this endeavor.

We are a prime example of how a small group can indeed make a difference. Our congregation consists of about 25 to 30 active members, and we are steadily becoming less each year due to death and people leaving for whatever reason.

So, instead of just accepting our fate we decided to do something. Several months ago, we attended a conference in Portsmouth with our district superintendent and several representatives from other churches that were experiencing the same difficulties as we were.

We listened to some of the ideas they had and decided to build from there. We would start with a small project and see what happened. A community outreach dinner was something we decided to try.

We arrived at this decision because of the need we saw in our community. At first we wondered how we would afford this dinner. The answer was for us, the members, was to donate everything ourselves.

Then things began to happen. People outside our church heard about our plans and donations began to arrive. We began to see God work.

Finally the day had arrived. There was an amazing amount of food, and as the clock reached 12 we held our breath. We had already decided that if only a few came our efforts would be worthwhile.

Then people began to arrive and from then until the end there was a steady flow. Some we knew. Others were strangers when they arrived but not when they left.

Still, others were our members – some were from the other churches in the community. They came, they ate, they laughed and they left with smiles. Some just sat and talked with people they knew or had met while they were with us.

Needless to say we were elated with the results, and when all was said and done we had served about 80 people – including our workers – and we had already decided to do this again on the last Saturday of July from 12 to 3 p.m. Then another discovery was made. Most of provisions for the July dinner had already been provided by the time we had finished serving and had the cleanup done from this one.

Now we would like to again thank everyone who helped to make this project a success – people who donated money, food and their time. Also, we would like to thank Mr. Allen Blair, who saw a human-interest side to this project and gave us a very nice write-up in The Ironton Tribune. We think it really did a lot to get the information out to the public, and we appreciate his efforts very much.

It is always sad to think a county with so much can still have children and adults who go to bed at night hungry. The only reason for this has to be the lack of effort on behalf of God’s people caring for each other as He cares for us. We at Pine Street hope to see this situation change in our community.

We hope to be able to say we made a difference. In closing, if you are lonely, if you are hungry, physically or spiritually, or if you would just like to sit and talk to people you wouldn’t normally see, please come and join us on Saturday, July 28 for our next free community dinner. Both of our ministers will be there to talk with you about anything you need to discuss. Help us make this dinner even more of a success than the last one was.

Pine Street United Methodist Church

Ironton