Louisville/Kentuckiana (and elsewhere)

In our own town, Crescent Hill members and friends have helped build Presbyterian House (house currently under construction pictured above) each year for 8 or 9 years (with 12 other churches)! We work with the partner-families to put up the frames, put on the roof, nail up blue board, insulation, siding, doors, windows, painting, whatever job we're taught to do, we do our best....----and by the grace of God, Presbyterian House gets built each year and is dedicated and celebrated by the family who works so hard to buy and build it -- and by the people who help them. We work 1 or 2 weekends a month for about 4 months (as a church).

At the Presbyterian Community Center we do several different jobs. Two of us go to a liaison idea time at the center with other Pres churches to see how we can best be helpful. A group goes down on 3rd Tues. to serve Kids' Cafe to any children who come in from the community--about 60-80 children (or sometimes even more) each time. We've been doing this for 5-6 years. Others of us work as tutors to the children and still others work to help neighborhood families do their tax returns.

At United Crescent Hill Area Ministries we serve Kids' Cafe dinners to a much smaller group of children on 1st Mon. of the month. Several of our members have served on the board Some have helped with the very active Senior Citizens group.

Some members of the church take the many warm coats, scarves, caps, gloves, and backpacks that we all bring to church, down to the Homeless Coalition.

One church member started a church garden (with the help of another member), on a plot in the back yard of the church and invites children (ages --to--) to come to Garden Camp. Children who wouldn't otherwise have opportunity to learn about growing one's own food, making meals, and canning salsa from it, are invited and transportation provided.

In our Gathering Room at the entrance to the sanctuary, we have a cabinet that holds many delicious coffees, teas, cocoas and cooking chocolate from Equal Exchange which we love to buy in aid of the Presbyterian Coffee project.

In the spring we sell the Mothers' Day cards from the Presbyterian Network program in order to buy treated mosquito nets for women and babies in Malawi to save their lives.

In the summer we love to bring our money to provide the funds for as many wells as we can for villages in Africa which so desperately need clean water.

We are very blessed to know and be close to the 9 mission co-partner families that are associated with our church. Their work is very important to us and we want to and try to be helpful where we can.

We have also been blessed to know the Immokolee Farm Workers and some church members have been to their work and living place in Florida. Then when they came here to Louisville to seek justice for the tomato pickers, we were able to have them come to our church to eat and sleep, and to worship together.

--Izzy Jones