Hello Friends and Family of the Revolution Community,

Several years ago, God placed on the heart of our former youth minister, Matt Dierdorff, the desire to lead our youth in serving the refugees and families of the Clarkston Community. It was Matt’s love for this community that the name Caring for Clarkston, C4C, was created. One year ago, God gave our youth community a vision of opening a food and clothing pantry in the Clarkston Community Center (CCC). With the leadership of Bob Swett and the desire by Will Berg to envision an Eagle Scout project that would have a lasting impact, it was decided that the Revolution Community would be obedient to God’s call on us.

In January of this year, a group of adults and youth met together for a day of visioning and discerning how God would want us to proceed. Beth White led our team on how to create a mission statement for our new found vision of creating a food and clothing pantry. After many hours of conversation and writing and re-writing by the youth, the following mission was adopted:

The Revolution Community Project: C4C strives to build passionate youth leaders who minister to the refugees and families in need at the Clarkston Community Center through sharing spiritual gifts by:

• Building and managing a food and clothing closet
• Developing relationships and providing consistent support to both nearby residents and refugees
• Helping the refugees assimilate into their new community and country
• Involving the greater community including the OGUMC members, friends and other congregations and donors

Over the past few months, the youth have created two C4C logos, painted these logos on walls and created an original art piece at VOX, held a food  drive in July, collected boxes of clothes and shoes, worked with VBS in collecting new socks and baby food for children, met with the Onepath Foundation to raise financial support, cleaned out space at both the youth building and the CCC, built storage shelves, painted, painted and painted, decorated the CCC space and have sorted food and clothes for hours. You should be proud of our youth and thankful to the adult leadership team that have coached them along the way and served along beside them. They have served over 600 hours in order to open the doors of C4C Food & Clothing Pantry this past Saturday.

It was a beautiful day in every way on Saturday. Twenty-six youth and seven adults met at 8:00 a.m. to begin sorting fresh produce to serve 24 families and to receive our instructions for the morning on which team we would be working: greeters, interviewers, sorters, runners, clothing helpers and childcare entertainers. At noon, we had prepared boxes and bags of food weighing in at 1559.5 pounds for 30 families and had helped clothed many of the women and children. WOW!! 

Please enjoy the following stories because you will be in awe of God’s provisions for Saturday.

All the food had been counted, the fresh produce purchased and it was Friday night when Beth Swett did her final count to see which items we may run short on. Beth wrote her list: juice, rice, sugar, garlic…. When we arrived at the CCC on Saturday morning and unlocked the door, we found in the food closet area on the table cases of everything that had been on Beth’s list along with extra fresh produce. God had provided!! Apparently on Friday afternoon, someone from Keller Williams had heard about our food pantry and took it upon themselves to go and purchase $400 worth of food. Now, I wonder where this person got the idea or even knew what to purchase? Isn’t it amazing how the Holy Spirit will lead US to do some of the most random things and then to find out that it was to meet a huge need in someone else’s life.

There was this one family of 5 children and one of the boys needed a pair of shoes. Our youth helped him sort through to look and see what we had that might work. They found a brand new pair of shoes that just happened to fit this child perfectly. The mother had tears in her eyes and he had the biggest smile on his face.

Our youth experienced God on Saturday. The refugees and families of Clarkston experienced Christ through our youth.

You may be asking, how can I help or get involved?

Food Needs:

*canned beans
*canned veggies
*canned tomatoes
*canned fruit
*canned chicken / tuna
*peanut butter
*pasta sauce
*1 lb. bags of dried beans
*soups and stews (Chili)
*cooking oil
*tea
*juice

Money:
For $141.00, we were able to buy onions, potatoes, carrots and Gala apples to serve 24 families. Money is always helpful so that we can provide fresh produce each month

Miscellaneous:
*plastic gloves

Family Service Project:
As always, we encourage families to serve together so that families may experience first hand God’s blessings and seeing Him work in the lives of people and events. Please consider C4C as a family service project. If every family made one contact and introduced the C4C project to an individual, a church, or a business for financial support then we will be able to make this monthly project sustainable and hopefully grow it quickly to a weekly program. We also will need help sorting clothes and food between our open dates along with purchasing groceries from the store and Atlanta Farmers Market. There is still much to be done and we need your gifts to help us.

Please let us know of your interest by contacting Robin Merrill @ 404-626-7702 and she can help you determine how to serve C4C.

Next C4C – Saturday, October 22nd from 8:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Meet at the Youth Cafe at 8:00 a.m. Drive to Clarkston Community Center together and return to Youth Cafe’ by 12:30 p.m.
Bring some money for lunch at the Oak Grove Market after our morning of serving together.