WOW

So, what have I been up to lately..... well, I joined a women's group at church called WOW. It stands for Women of the Word, and we meet on Wednesday evenings and go from September to April. The study we are doing is The Patriarchs: Encountering the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by Beth Moore. We are just three weeks into it and right now we are studying Abraham. Beth Moore is a wonderful woman of God! I have always heard good things about her and her books, but have never read one of her books or done one of her studies until now. I did see a half hour segment of hers on the Christian television station one time and thought she was excellent.

In WOW, we have a large group time and then we break up into smaller groups to discuss the lesson and do prayer requests. Each week varies with the schedule. Beth has a video for each lesson, and so some weeks we are in large group time for an hour to watch the video and other weeks we are in large group time for about 10 - 15 minutes for either a skit or for worship. On the weeks we watch a video, we only have about 20 minutes in our small group time, and the other weeks we have about an hour and fifteen minutes for small group.

There are different teams within WOW for women to be a part of. There is the hospitality, drama, worship, prayer, and missions teams. The hospitality team makes coffee for us for the evening, the drama team does skits for us, the worship team leads us in worship one Wed. a month, the prayer team prays before hand for the whole group, and the missions team helps out with welcoming refugee families that come in. I am extremely excited about the missions team because that is the team that I am on! Our goal is to assist PARA (Programs Assisting Refugee Acculturation) with new refugee families. PARA is a part of Bethany Christian Services. PARA's goal for refugee families is to be self-sufficient within 6 months. So, where do we come into play? Well, we are collecting donated items from the WOW women and putting together welcome kits for the families. We are collecting kitchen supplies......dishes, pots and pans, silverware, etc., and we are collecting cleaning supplies.....dish soap, hand soap, bath soap, brooms, etc., and personal needs items like bedding, towels, toothbrush and toothpaste, shampoo, etc., and grocery items that are non-perishable like cereals, soups, vegetables, and fruit. The items listed above make up one kit, and we want about 3 or 4 kits available because we never know when a family might be coming in. Sometimes we might have a little bit of notice and other times we could have just two days notice depending on the reason the family is fleeing from their country. Right now we know of a family of 5 that is coming in October, but we don't know exactly when. Other items we try to collect are clothing items and gifts like a stuffed animal for children. Those items we wait on until we know the specifics about the family......boys, girls, ages, sizes, etc.

Anybody in WOW can volunteer to help out with picking the families up from the airport, delivering the welcome kits, and getting them acclimated to their new home environment. I am so excited for the first family to come in!!