Outreach

JUMC Outreach Mission of the Month for August is Fresh Water Friends

JUMC Outreach Committee has chosen Fresh Water Friends for the Mission of the Month in August 2025. Fresh Water Friends is new to the JUMC Outreach Committee, and is headquartered close to home in Ballston Lake, NY. They are a 501(c)3 nonprofit public charity founded in 2017. Their mission is to share the love of Jesus Christ by providing clean water to communities in need. They work with local partners to build wells, provide water delivery and filtration, and find creative solutions to water problems on a village-by-village basis in India, Pakistan, Uganda, and Malawi. Their vision is to share the joy of clean water and the hope of Living Water with every thirsty person – until no one is left unreached. About 70% of India’s surface water is polluted by raw sewage, and children there regularly die of illnesses associated with unclean drinking water. Many young women walk up to 3 miles one way to collect water (weighing up to 30 pounds!), making it impossible to go to school because of the time it takes to bring the water back to their villages.

But there’s a solution, and we can help!

Fresh Water Friends serves these communities by building deep bedrock wells to clean water aquifers, providing clean water for everyone in the village in a safe and protected location. Our gifts of love directly bless a community in need, bringing them clean water, and with it, better health, hygiene, and the chance to pursue education and employment. Over the past nine years, Fresh Water Friends has installed over 560 wells, reaching more than 500,000 people with the joy of clean water and the hope of Living Water.

To learn more about Fresh Water Friends, please click here!

Please Consider donating! Make Checks payable to JUMC with Memo: MOM August

or:

 

Thank you!

Thank you for participating in JUMC Outreach efforts. As you consider giving, be encouraged by reading the thank you letters we receive from those we support.

Click here to see the impact (updated) we are making in our community.

Please bring your redeemable soda cans/bottles to Fellowship Hall to donate to the mission of the month. Remove the pop tops from the soda cans and save for Shriner’s Hospital. These little pop tops mount up to pounds of aluminum!

If anyone has soda cans/ bottles that they would like to have returned but are unable or do not want to bring to the church, please call Barb Phillips. She will pick them up and donate the money to the Mission of the Month. Call 518-527-8591.

 

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who has brought the bags of soda bottles and cans to Fellowship
Hall to donate to the mission of the month. And a very special thank you to those who are removing
the pop tops from the soda cans and saving them for Shriner’s Hospital. It’s amazing what these
aluminum pop tops can do.

If anyone has cans/bottles that they would like to have returned but are unable or do not want to, Barb
Phillips will pick them up and donate the money to the Mission of the Month. (See the JUMC Outreach portion of our website.)

Dr. Belinda Forbes

Good news – PPE has been purchased and is in process of distribution! AMC will receive its donation on Monday, June 1 and hopefully have the supplies delivered to field offices by next Friday. Work is still underway for the other components of AMC’s COVID-19 rapid response.

The cases of COVID-19 are now more visible in Nicaragua as hospitals and clinics become saturated with patients. Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast is extremely vulnerable due to limitations in health services, and access by the population to health information and prevention. AMC has a proposal for reaching the communities where they serve to prevent the spread of coronavirus the distribution of PPE and cleaning supplies, and a public awareness campaign. Unfortunately, AMC did not qualify for the UMCOR COVID-19 rapid response grant but there are other was to support AMC in their effort.

A fundraising campaign called Proteccion Pinolero de Emergencia (yes, PPE!) is currently underway, coordinated by a coalition of solidarity groups and led by FNE. With support from the Proteccion Pinolero de Emergencia campaign, AMC will be one of the organizations distributing protective equipment to health clinics, Casa Materna (maternal waiting homes) and community health workers coming into contact with infected patients.

Go to this link to make a donation. The campaign is ongoing.
https://secure.givelively.org/…/ppe-for-nicaraguan-healthca… Every dollar donated is matched. All donations are tax-deductible.

Thanks for helping Nicaraguans as they face what will be yet another enormous challenge in their history. Your support matters. Muchas gracias

Click here to see Belinda on Facebook

Volunteers In Mission (VIM) 

Volunteers In Mission (VIM) is a wonderful organization of the United Methodist Church putting volunteers into Christian service where there is a need on a local, national, or international level. Past sites that members of our church have been involved at include: Vermont, Iowa, Cuba, and Nicaragua. A trip to Ireland is pending this May. The Outreach Team at Jonesville has funding available to assist members who are interested in joining a VIM project. For information on current or upcoming VIM projects visit the Upper New York Conference website at www.unyumc.org. Click on Mission & Ministry>volunteers in mission>upcoming VIM events. Many have found it to be a personal life changing event in their outlook of the world around them.

Caring for Creation

As another element of our efforts to focus on preserving and protecting God’s Gifts, we have begun using recycled/compostable products for the men’s breakfast and fellowship coffee hour. As many JUMC members are aware the lifecycle of plastics is huge. Styrofoam takes about 20,000 years to degrade. That same Styrofoam cup/plate will be in the Colonie Landfill 500 years from now.

There are other problems with plastic. When certain plastics deteriorate, they release chemicals that may act as endocrine disruptors and interfere with normal hormone functioning in animals and humans. Many plastic water bottles, baby bottles, and other food containers contain bispbenol A (BPA), a compound that can leach out in small quantities and, based on animal studies, can cause reproductive and developmental abnormalities.

Products–like cutlery and cups, trash bags and take-out containers–that look like regular plastic but are one hundred percent biodegradable are available today. Leading natural food stores, including Whole Foods, offer corn-based biodegradable plastic to-go containers manufactured by NatureWorks. Some stores use both corn-based containers as well as recyclable plastic containers. Earth Fare uses recyclable #1 plastic containers for foods from the hot bar, but has corn-based containers from NatureWorks available to customers in its bulk foods department.

While there are many issues, both positive and negative, that surround the products we consume, JUMC continues to be actively engaged in the discussion.