Give to OGHS special mission offering. Your support helps disaster relief, refugee/immigration, hunger, and water programs around the world.
ONE GREAT HOUR OF SHARING
The One Great Hour of Sharing (OGHS) special mission offering of the United Church of Christ involves you in disaster relief, refugee/immigration, hunger and water programs, and development ministries throughout the world. When a disaster strikes or people are displaced or made refugees by violence or extreme poverty, you are part of the immediate response and of the long-term recovery. Through OGHS you engage in holistic development programs including health care, education, agriculture, food sustainability, micro-financing and empowerment. Your contributions to One Great Hour of Sharing put you in the right place at the right time for the relief, accompaniment and recovery of the most vulnerable. You meet immediate needs and you address the underlying causes that create those needs in the first place.
We will dedicate the offering on March 8th.
Let love flow
Joshua Mumbi used to spend much of his time collecting water. When it rained, he would collect water running in the streets. Often he would spend much of the day walking to a local water source and carrying back buckets. Sometimes he would even travel to the water source with his family the night before, spending the night there so that they could bring back water in the morning. His mother, Josephine, did not like to make the journey alone — it was not safe.
There was not much time to go to school. And when he did go to school, Joshua Mumbi was very tired during the day. It was hard to focus; it was hard to learn.
But thanks to your gifts through One Great Hour of Sharing, Joshua Mumbi and his family — and all of the other families in his village — have a safe, clean water source close to home. With a new solar-powered borehole well, they have water for cooking, water for drinking, water for bathing and keeping things clean and sanitary. Because you let love flow, water brought new life to a whole community. Now children like Joshua Mumbi and his siblings can go to school every day, and a whole world of opportunity is open to them. Now the whole community is empowered to provide for their needs, plan for their future, and pursue new opportunities for growth.
So that more communities can experience this new life, please give generously, and let love flow.
Empowerment
Not Just Peanuts
In a community that’s far from any town, where only 22 families live, 3 sisters planned to change their community with peanuts. Sarthia, Piremeka, and Vishaathana explained that it had only rained in their community in India a few times over the last year. A lack of water had affected everyone.
The thought to improve their community began when Piremaka and her husband began dreaming of a better life for their two children. They heard about programs that provided small loans to people like them. The first loan they received, helped them open a little store.
The store—the only of its kind for miles—carried groceries and items that you would find in any corner store. They had bread, milk, oil, and even candy and sweets. However, the store didn’t provide Piremeka and her family the kind of life that would give their children better opportunities, and there certainly wasn’t enough of a profit to invest in their community. So Piremeka and her sisters came up with a different plan. They got loans to grow peanuts.
As peanut farmers, they were very wise. They held on to their peanuts for just the right time to take them to market. They would then sell and receive the best price for their harvest. They learned that if they would plant peanuts for 2 or 3 harvests and then allow the land to rest, that they would reap a bigger harvest while also protecting their farmland investment and peanut business.
The sisters and their families used peanut farming to raise enough money to ultimately build wells on their property. Where they lived, their gardens, animals, and livelihoods were all affected by a water shortage. By building three wells in their small community, they would change the flow of the water, bringing water into the community where all could benefit. To you and me, these may look like ordinary peanuts. But to the people in Piremeka’s village, the peanuts were an investment in their futures.
Development
Because We Grow
Trinity White Plume just turned 13. Like the gardens she has newly learned to plant and tend, she is growing in extraordinary ways. Where Trinity lives on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota — roughly the size of the state of Connecticut — there is but one grocery store. Moreover, Oglala Lakota County, where the reservation is located, has the lowest per capita income in the country and consistently ranks as the poorest county in the nation.
During the pandemic, what was already a food desert has become even more so, heightening the challenge of food accessibility for Trinity’s family and all the families living in Pine Ridge. Thanks to gifts from One Great Hour of Sharing, the garden projects of Owe Aku are making a difference.
Support Farmers
Because We See
When did we see you?” — in a time of need, in a time of weakness? In a time of hunger, in a time of thirst? Even without a pandemic, it is a truth, a reminder, that in every time and season, the Church finds itself and its Savior through relationships with those in need. We belong in this place, not just to help address those needs, though that is surely part of it. We belong there, also, because it is through relationships with those whom we see experiencing hunger, oppression, thirst, imprisonment, or illness, we might be transformed, too, as we become/experience/create/live the Church, together.
First Congregational Church of Tallmadge 