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Home  >  News

In The City for Good!

Opportunities: Please remember these avenues of ministry in your prayers, and use your particular passions to serve our neighbors
 
Central Iowa Shelter
 We serve on the 18 & 19 of each month. Help serve, cook food, laugh, serve conversation and kindness with friendly people at the Central Iowa Shelter. Recipes and the sign up sheet are available in the Narthex. For more information contact Ed Slattery at 254.1750.

Interfaith Hospitality Network
Already 11 St. John's members  have shared in the experience of helping families in need of temporary housing. As part of this network, we provide overnight support for Aldersgate Methodist Church. St. John's shift is from 8pm until morning. Volunteers read stories, play games or just keep company with families and children until bedtime. Volunteers have their own rooms and air mattress are provided. In the morning, they help with breakfast and getting families off to work and school.  This is great way to help support those working to support themselves. If you have questions, or are interested you can visit with recent volunteers, Margaret & Fred Townsend, Linda Christensen, Blair Hansen, Wanda Havard, Jennifer Early, Adam Graaf, Mark Garner, Chris Frantsvog and Bob & Jo Rod,  to hear about their experience "first hand". Watch for our next opportunity to serve!

Circles of Support - Serenity Seekers   is a group of women from the Family Violence Center and friends of St. John's that gathers the 1st Tuesday and 3rd Thursday of every month for meal and conversation. Training in understanding domestic violence is provided. Contact Pr. Mithelman at 243-7691 for more information on becoming involved.

Basic Needs
Toothbrushes and toothpaste! We have been quietly furnishing dozens of these items to various shelters throughout the past year. donations go in the purple bin outside of the chapel.

Thrivent Blitz Build!
Spring has finally arrived, so it must be time for the Thrivent "Blitz Build"! Please join in building 2 new homes and re-habbing one ranch-style home in the King-Irving neighborhood, beginning with a building blitz, April 29-May3. People with various skills are needed, not just carpenters! To volunteer, either contact Wanda Havard at wanda.havard@fiserv.com or 284-5696 OR Brendalyn Shird at the Habitat office bshird@gdmhabitat.org or 471-8686.

Connection Cafe
 Our noon meal ministry, The Connection Café, provides lunch to people who are homeless, in shelter, as well as the working poor five days per week. It is not unusual to serve 150 people or more each day…

 Please continue to remember the Cafe throughout the year, as this is not “optional” ministry, but a matter of life and death for people in our own community, and truly part of being “in the city for good.”  If you have questions about the Café, please contact St. John’s representatives to the Bridge Board of Directors:  Karen Ritchie, Harry Hinrichs, Kathy Kroll and Pastor Mithelman…And thank you for such faithful support over the years

Light of Hope Event
 April is National Child Abuse Prevention month, dedicated to the many  children who live with abuse and neglect. During the month of April, hundreds of communities across the United States will come together at candle-lighting ceremonies to honor the promise of remembering the plight of America's abused, abandoned, and neglected children. Please join us April 17th in Hill Auditorium at Blank Children's Hospital at 5pm for our Light of Hope Ceremony of remembrance and hope for children who were victims of abuse in 2007.

Food Pantry
Please continue to shop for the DMARC food pantry, or make a regular contribution to this ministry. Summer usually brings more hungry people into the city, even as donation to the local food shelves tend to drop. DMARC counts on St. John's contributions. (WE were recently notified that we are one of the churches with the highest monthly donations of food items!) Keep up the good work!

Update! Nine middle school students helped collect over 500 food items for the DMARC Emergency Food Pantry on Saturday April 19!! A big thank you to Alexa Berkenpas, Maddie Parmeter, Kat Lunde, Olivia Simpson, Chloe Peterson, Erica Ramaekers, Susanna Stageberg, Ian Anderson, and Jenna Warming for their hard work! Thanks also to Lora Simpson, Ellen Rothweiller, Pastor Bob and Dana Norris for their supervision!

  

After School Arts Project (ASAP)
Our St. John’s After School Arts Program works with inner-city children in grades 3 - 5 primarily from King, Moulton, and Edmunds schools one day a week in 8-week sessions. The children can select one of five art or music studios they would like for each session.

We try to have at least 4 adults in each studio with 6-10 children. The students have loved the one-on-one relationship with our volunteers. It has been very rewarding for our volunteers as well.

A comment from one of the Des Moines Art teachers: "I LOVE the teacher-student ratio. The kids are enjoying so much adult attention. That seems to be the key. They feel special that someone is taking time to sit with them and teach them. What a message to send to a child who is just beginning to wonder what the world holds for him/her in the future. When studies look at adults who achieve success from a difficult childhood background, the thing they find in common is that SOMEBODY in their lives believed in them, mentored them, and encouraged them to keep learning."

A special education teacher went out of his way to tell this art teacher how much two of his students have grown as a result of our ASAP program.

A comment from a parent of one of the ASAP students: "It is a blessing to have a program willing to reach out to our community and teach our children new things to explore and expand their minds. Thank you for caring!"

ASAP could use your help in one of the following areas:

1. Volunteering: 1 day/week for 8 wks. (Thursdays, 3:00 to 5:30 pm)
Session 3: March 27-May 15

In Studios (we have a lead teacher for each studio who plans the sessions but we need volunteers to help):

• Bookmaking/Calligraphy/

  Collage/Scrapbooking

• Ceramics

• Digital Photography

• Masks/Puppets

• Sculpture

2. Donating : Make healthy snacks one or more times during the 8-week session. (Contact Cathy Talcott, 276-9499)
 

Cash toward a Digital Photography Studio
Toward purchase of five $89 digital cameras

Toward purchase of a $99 printing station

 

Cash toward clay & supplies for ceramics studio
 

Items you may have at home for other studios:

     Bookmaking/collage:

     Variety of colored paper, decorative paper,

     wrapping paper

     Old greeting cards

     Sequins

     Mat board or good poster board

     (variety of sizes)

     Scrapbooking supplies like stickers, etc.

Sculpture: Use your imagination on items for

sculpture such as:

     oatmeal box, paper towel/tp roll,

     telephone wire, small wood scraps,

     dowels (or pieces), metal scraps, etc.

Mask/Puppets:

Sharp scissors, a shelf unit, scraps of felt, buttons, feathers or sparkles, etc.

If you would be willing to help in the funding for the winter and spring sessions, please make your gifts to: St. John's Lutheran Church - ASAP.

Special gifts needed for the Arts at St. John's
 
In The City for Good