UMCOR Badge Makers

10/27/2017

This week offered the usual rhythm of email, phone calls, miles, and meetings. One new gathering was for volunteers who will be assisting our United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) as they create badges for the trained Early Response Team (ERT) members in all the annual conferences. While the average United Methodist might think of UMCOR as a building full of responders ready for the disaster call the reality is that UMCOR is a paid staff of 3, with twice as many consultants who usually specialize in training, and then the "boots on the ground" are the disaster response people across the nation. So, the reality is that WE are UMCOR! As United Methodists pray, give, and go in response to disasters we are UMCOR in action. Note that our NGA team of volunteers will be making the badges for ALL of the ERT members responding to all the disasters across the nation. That's significant impact!

Tuesday we had the first training for our ERT badge making volunteers with Ellijay, Acworth, Griffin, Bethel/ Stockbridge, & Gainesville churches represented. I was really surprised at how skilled these folk are with excel spreadsheets, and how quickly they "got" the system. I was also very surprised that we had such a showing from OTP and didn't have any ITP churches represented as this once a month volunteering takes place at our Global Ministries headquarters on Ponce. But there is still room to volunteer, so I'm hopeful some of our metro Atlanta churches will rise to the occasion.

Catch me on this or other opportunities to help you make a big impact in your mission and ministry!

Scott Parrish