Category: Flood Recovery

2021 Golf Outing Results

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The results are in! The September 13th golf outing at Coatesville Country Club raised more than $5300 for the church’s flood relief fund! Because of the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Ida, the Director of the Lord’s Pantry food bank of Downingtown directed the 2021 golf outing proceeds be given to the Messiah Lutheran Church flood relief fund this year.

40 golfers registered for the 2021 golf outing and donated several bags of nonperishable goods to the Lord’s Pantry Food Bank. Thanks to Messiah members Mike Petrillo and Sheila Yamasaki in supporting the event. Additional thanks to Joan and Chuck Gibson for sponsoring the event.  We also want to thank and recognize our corporate sponsorships:

While we did not approach any of the local Downingtown businesses this year to sponsor the outing due to the burden placed on them by the pandemic in 2020, we distributed $1000 to them in the purchase of prizes that were raffled off at the golf outing. We wanted to give back to the businesses that have given to us over the last 8 events that include:

We also would like to recognize the local golf courses who contributed golfing foursome packages for our silent auctions:

Thank you to all the Messiah Lutheran Church members who contributed money towards supporting the local businesses! Also thanks to Kathy Joyce and Carol Reiner for respectively donating a handmade golf quilt and a gift certificate to Amani’s BYOB.

See you next year for our 10th annual event! We hope to be back to a June date for 2022 and we will be pivoting back towards supporting The Lord’s Pantry food bank of Downingtown!

Flood Recovery Update | September 5

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The Church is the People, and Love is our Home

As of the end of Saturday, all wet drywall and flooring have been removed from the building. The trash pile is slowly receding as trips are made to the landfill, and these trips will resume on Tuesday. We have secured warehouse space and transported salvageable items there for storage.

We want to thank everyone who has shown up in such a big way since Thursday. The last several days have been a lot of work, but they’ve been worth it. Our remediation consultant was “blown away by how much was done.” He feels that we likely saved a ton of money working as fast and as completely as we did. It’s a huge victory. Thank you!

What’s Next

We’ll be meeting with the remediation consultant this week to determine next steps for the building. As for the church, we will continue our regular ministries and programs to the best of our abilities. This includes things like Growing God’s Way, VAMOS, fellowship opportunities, etc. You’ll be hearing about those in Pastor Tim’s regular emails.

Council is planning for:

  • Worship – For the remainder of September, we’ll worship via Zoom/YouTube at 9AM. We are pursuing alternate locations for in-person worship.
  • Volunteer Opportunities – We need your help! See the next section of this message.
  • Flood Recovery Updates – After the service on Sunday, September 12, we’ll spend 15 minutes on a status update and Q&A.

This Week’s Volunteer Opportunities

Tuesday, September 7

  • 9-11 AM
  • Boxing up books in the library
  • Moving storage items on the second floor of the fellowship hall
  • We need a small team of people to help with this
  • There’s no sign-up; just come when you can

Saturday, September 11

  • Four shifts: 8-10 AM, 10 AM-Noon, 1-3 PM, 3-5 PM
  • Moving trash to dumpsters
  • There’s no sign-up; just come when you can
  • Wear closed-toe shoes and sunscreen; bring gloves if you have them
  • Friends and acquaintances are welcome!

Photo Album

We’ve started a Google Photos album to document this chapter in Messiah’s history. Click the button below to view others’ photos and share your own.

View & Share Photos

Other Ways to Help

Offerings: We appreciate your financial gifts to Messiah! During this time, flood relief is at the forefront of everyone’s minds, but we’ll continue to have ordinary expenses so your regular offerings are important, too. There are multiple ways to give:
  1. Mail your regular offering envelope to the church. We’re checking the mail every day and are maintaining our regular process of counting.
  2. Use your bank’s bill pay feature. This method allows you to set up recurring payments, and the church benefits from your full donation with no reduction for fees.
  3. Submit a payment on Messiah’s website. Go to our Online Giving page, select one or more funds to receive your gift, and complete the transaction with a credit card or your bank account information. We’ve set up a Flood Relief account and you can include your regular offering and flood relief in the same transaction. Link: https://messiahevents.com/onlinegiving
  4. Use Vanco’s mobile app. Vanco is in the process of introducing a new app. If you’ve used the Give+ app to set up recurring payments in the past, no changes are needed at this time. If you haven’t used this method before, we recommend waiting until the new app is rolled out later this month.
  5. GoFundMe. We’ve set up a campaign specifically for flood relief. While we welcome your gifts here, there are significant fees associated. We’d love to have you share with your network, but one of the other methods above is better for Messiah members. Link: www.messiahevents.com/gofundme
Inventory: Did you take home church items for cleaning and safekeeping? If you have something, please enter it in our Google form so we know where to find it when we’re ready to bring it back to church. Link: www.messiahevents.com/inventory