Ministries fill bags with supplies
Back to school means new pencils, new notebooks, new folders and new book bags. For some, those items will be supplied by churches.
“You don't want to be the only kid going to school without a backpack or without the tools you need,” said Karen Schiebel, local mission and outreach facilitator at New Life Christian Ministries in Saxonburg.
New Life Christian Ministries and St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church are some of the many churches in Butler County that collected school supplies to be donated to students in need.
“Kids need everything for school, and there are a lot of poor children in Butler,” said Bonnie Bachman of Three Ts.
St. Mark's Three Ts group provided bags with supplies to the Dunbar Center, as well as Glade Run Lutheran Services.
“It stands for Tea, Task and Talk and we do all three of them very well,” said Madaline Golec, who has been a member of Three Ts since the 1950s.
Golec said when she was in school, students were given one pencil in September and one in December.
“Now we put six pencils in the bag to start,” she said.
In previous years, the church has donated to international organizations, such as Lutheran World Relief. When Three T's member Virginia Rettig's granddaughter told her about the need at the Dunbar Center, the group decided to support children locally before sending items internationally.
“We felt the need to help people in Butler — in our own community,” Rettig said.
Rettig, Eleanor Morris and June Heeter from the Three Ts group make each of the bags from fabric that is donated to the church for the Three Ts' quilting ministry but is too heavy to be quilted.
The bags are then each filled with crayons, notebooks, pencils, erasers, folders and other school supplies by members of the congregation.
“The kids around here need help,” said Karen Blum of Three Ts. “There's a lot of kids whose families or parents don't have the money to buy supplies.”
Once the bag is brought back to the church, the members go through them to make sure each has what it needs and take out extra items to be donated to Glade Run for general use.
“There's so many children that need supplies, and it's a fun project to do,” said Phyllis Kaltenbaugh of Three Ts.This year, the group filled 94 bags to be given to the organizations.“My kids always had, but there are a lot of kids that don't have and if I can help just one, that's a good thing to do,” said Bobbie Marshall of Three Ts.New Life Christian Ministries has been collecting book bags filled with school supplies since 2004.Schiebel works with not only members of the congregation, but also many Western Pennsylvania school districts, Butler County Children and Youth Services, as well as other organizations to provide back-to-school items for specific families in need.“We specifically work with the people in the community and churches who don't have the program going on,” Schiebel said.Scheibel receives only the gender, age and grade of the child from many organizations for confidentiality reasons.She then takes that information and tells the congregation how many bookbags for what age and gender are needed.Schiebel works 100 percent off of referrals and does not place any sort of income restrictions on who gets the bookbags and supplies.“I try to reach those who are on that fringe because they don't qualify for a lot of freebies,” Scheibel said.The church provides backpacks for every child in the family, whether they are going to college or only 4 years old.After everything is collected, Scheibel and her team sort the school supplies evenly. Any extra items, such as lunch boxes or calculators are put together on one table.“Each child is able to choose one item from that table, so it's something special,” Scheibel said.Scheibel meets one-on- one with families referred to the church or gives the book bags to the organization with referrals for distribution.Scheibel's team, just as the Three Ts group, saw the need to provide school supplies locally.“We are called first to do the mission work in our local area, then as God provides, we can reach out to other areas,” Scheibel said.Inside of each New Life backpack, the team puts a note saying the backpack is provided by New Life Christian Ministries family and friends and a small Gospel.New Life is still collecting supplies to be given to different organizations such as Children and Youth and Butler Memorial Hospital family first resources, while Three Ts is always accepting fabrics for use in the backpack ministry as well as its quilting ministry.
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