Pictured L-R: Kellie Bright, Maggie Moyer, Sandra Salter, Joy Galloway, Carolyn Holloway
GENEVA, Alabama (BNc) — Ladies from the Geneva church work throughout the year to bring joy and furnish needs to children in Panama Central America.
The former church building, now mission/fellowship building, of the Geneva Church of Christ is filled with school supplies heading to the Darien southern jungle area of Panama Central America. The Geneva deadline is Saturday, November 4 with the delivery to arrive at its destination in December.
In each of the 325 backpacks is a set of clothes appropriate for each child’s age, a packet of hygiene items (shampoo, soap, toothpaste and brush, washcloth, band-aids, deodorant, foot powder for boys or lotion for girls), and school supplies (folders, rulers, pencils, paper, sewing kits for older girls and candy bags). Every school supply box and backpack includes a Spanish New Testament, Spanish reading books and a pamphlet introducing the church of Christ, how to be saved and where area churches may be located.
For each of the three schools being supplied, there are hundreds of packages of vegetable and fruit gardening seeds along with gardening tools being sent. These are used to plant gardens for the school and for the children to take produce home to their family. This effort was begun by the Geneva group in 2010. They have received word that the people appreciate these items and are planting gardens with the seeds.
This year the ladies are sending 14 teachers’ bags and approximately 12 boxes of additional school supplies along with the 325 backpacks. “The Indian villages have their own culture and live in areas where there is much poverty. For the students and teachers to have backpacks with supplies like this is unbelievable to them,” stated Joy Galloway who spearheads the Geneva effort.
Used plastic food containers are saved all year long in which to pack supplies, and sales are watched closely to purchase items throughout the year.
As a teenage girl, I prayed to marry a preacher. I knew no one who was desiring to be a preacher but each night I knelt by my bed and prayed, “Lord, if I am capable of being a preacher’s wife I would like to marry a preacher. If not, just let me marry a Christian.” God answered that prayer for me. Our local preacher, Jerry Humphries, preached in two gospel meetings that summer and invited a young man from Alabama Christian College (now Faulkner University) to preach in his absence. He brought his girlfriend with him so that took him out of the running. But when I learned they were coming back in a week or so, I asked if they didn’t have some fine young man they could bring down and let me meet. The girl thought for a minute, snapped her fingers and said, “Old Doug.” Old Doug and I have been married 53 years and have two children and two grandchildren. All our children are faithful members of the church. God is so good. I love Him so.