Offering given at bishop’s
service to aid children

Worshipers at the fifth annual Bishop’s Thanksgiving Gathering Nov. 20 in Corpus Christi can share their blessings with youngsters served by local community centers.
The offering collected during the 5 p.m. service at First UMC, Corpus Christi, is to support Wesley Community Centers of Nueces County.
Bishop Joel N. Martinez has called Thanksgiving gatherings over the past five years as special times for people of the Southwest Texas and Rio Grande conferences to celebrate their many blessings from God. Theme for the 2005 gathering is “Seasons of Generosity.”
The Rev. Paul R. Dirdak, deputy general secretary of the General Board of Global Ministries in New York City, is to be guest preacher. His sermon is entitled “Grateful Hands Become Gentle Hands.”
Wesley Community Centers in Robstown and Corpus Christi have always focused on children. That’s what Executive Director Edie Jackson Mathis said the community centers have done since the Robstown facility opened in 1942.
When the community center expanded to Corpus Christi in 2001, the focus on children became a bit more specialized, with an emphasis on children who are homeless or have been removed from their families by child welfare agencies, Mathis said.
One objective for Wesley House in Corpus Christi is to become an emergency shelter for children who have been rescued from their homes, she said.
The plan is to renovate the second floor of the former convent at 4015 McArthur to provide a place where those children can be loved and nurtured right away.
While Wesley House awaits funding and required permits for the renovation, it continues with its ministry to homeless families. One program is daycare for children.
“We go to the homeless shelters and pick the children up,” Mathis said. The children from shelters and from transitional housing are cared for while their parents work, seek employment or attend job training classes.
Mathis said the actual daycare program is “no different from the one down the street—except when we work with a woman in support of her children, she becomes part of our family.”
“So much of what the Methodist Church is doing is being caring and loving, concerned and nurturing,” Mathis said. “That’s what this community center is about.
“The Methodist Church supports the community center; they make a difference in what this community center is able to do.”