A Note from Pastor Shelly

What Is All the Buzz About?

You may have noticed a buzz around Sunday School this year—a buzz in addition to all of the regular activity of the children learning and singing and growing in God. This buzz specifically has to do with bees.

You may have seen the children walking into Sunday School with little bee containers rattling with coins or you may have seen our resident bee, Brittany Bollinger, walking around in a bee costume. This all has to do with the children’s Sunday School offering. Each year the children’s offering is given to a different ministry outside the church. We alternate each year giving to an international ministry and a local ministry. Last year the children’s coins and dollars amounted to nearly $1,000 and was given locally to Real Life Children’s Ranch—a wonderful residential ministry in Okeechobee that provides a home-setting for children without families.

This year the children’s money is going to buy bees. Each $30 that the children raise will buy a package of bees. The bees are given to families in need all over the globe from India to the Dominican Republic. The bees help struggling families earn income through the sale of honey, beeswax, and pollen. Beehives require almost no space, and once established, are inexpensive to maintain. As bees search for nectar, they pollinate plants. Placed strategically, beehives can as much as double some fruit and vegetable yields. In this way, a beehive can be a boon to a whole village. Also, you may have read or seen reports on CBS news and in national magazines reporting that around the world bee populations are decreasing and in many places dying out. So the children’s gifts both buy bees to help families and help to increase the worldwide bee population—a necessary link in our food chain.

Bringing a weekly offering each week to buy bees is just part of the Sunday School children’s growing and learning. Our Sunday School theme this year is Growing with God and the children have been growing in learning about God’s word, God’s creation, our role in caring for God’s creation (check out the new Sunday School garden in the courtyard), and about how they are unique parts of God’s creation each with different gifts to share. Things are definitely abuzz in Sunday School, come and check them out!

Thankful to be growing in God with you,

Pastor Shelly