Every year, missionary groups from local churches go abroad to help, to teach, to share their love for God with the good works they do. They are to be commended, those who join the adventure to help others in need.
The Wesley Foundation of Greenville is one of those groups. The Wesley Foundation is the United Methodist Campus Ministry for East Carolina University and Pitt Community College and every year, foundation leaders take a group of college students on a missionary trip during the schools’ spring break. This spring, however, the group chose not to go overseas. Instead, they looked around and realized their help was needed elsewhere. That elsewhere lay no more than an hour’s drive to the east, to the areas where disaster recovery volunteers still toil daily to restore homes and rebuild lives damaged by Hurricane Irene.
These students willingly gave up their spring break adventure helping the people of some likely sunny, Caribbean nation to labor in the chilly March air of eastern North Carolina, helping their neighbors, still in need a year later.
We encourage other faith-based organizations to follow the lead of the Wesley Foundation, to show their love for their neighbor by gathering together volunteers, putting hand to hammer, hammer to nail and let the people of Aurora and Englehard, Stumpy Point and Lowland, know they have not been forgotten.
Sometimes the best kind of adventure is not waiting on some exotic shore — it’s just outside the door.
To volunteer your group to help with the ongoing Hurricane Irene recovery, call Ann Huffman, director of the disaster call center at the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, at 1-888-440-9167.