Since January, your LAC Staff Team has been working closely with a number of groups to discover appropriate and effective ways that we could partner in Texas, Puerto Rico and Lebanon. As a reminder, in response to Pastor Greg’s prompting, we set aside 2% of our calendar year-end giving ($53,378) to apply to the areas devastated by last Fall’s hurricanes and the on-going displacement of refugees from Syria.
As I reported in late January in the worship services, I had just returned from meeting in Puerto Rico where we identified an unmet need. This Spring we will be partnering with a ministry, Urban Strategies, and together we will provide equipping in trauma care and counseling with and for, local church leaders. This will involve a small team of care professionals from Lake and beyond, who will host training around resiliency for their long-term crisis environment situation.
Family Ministries Associate Pastor, Chuck Hunt, and High School Director, Mark Fields, met with local ministries in Texas in late January. They identified three distinct ministries with potential for long-term relationship for Lake. One of these will provide opportunities for skilled construction workers to join volunteer construction crews coordinated through a local church. The second will be a week-long experience in June for our high school students, serving alongside a local outreach ministry providing daily and weekly ministry to hurricane victims. The last option will provide an opportunity for an intergenerational/family service project focused on a neglected mobile home community completely wiped out by the storms and where demolition and site clean-up is still the greatest need.
Lastly, we look forward to coming alongside Rayaq Church in Lebanon in their ongoing outreach to Syrian refugees. This is the church a Lake Team built a playground for this past November - funded by our children through VBS and over the summer. We are looking forward to hosting Pastor Haddad in April at Lake and will share more details of this relief partnership then.
To be notified of details regarding any of these upcoming opportunities, send an e-mail to and label your message “Relief.” The majority of the funds collected will go directly to relief, therefore ministry participants will be responsible for their funding or for their fund-raising.