Oklahoma Church Missionary Group Lends A Hand At Mills County Storehouse
Youth from Riverview Baptist Church assist in sorting items at the Mills County Storehouse retail store.
Volunteer helpers from Riverview Baptist Church in Oklahoma clear away weeds, limbs and debris outside the Mills County Storehouse.
Two members of the youth delegation from Riverview Baptist Church help load food into a vehicle at the Mills County Storehouse pantry.
The motto of the Mills County Storehouse is “People Helping People.”
Thursday, the food pantry and thrift store, known for providing assistance to Mills County and southwest residents in need, was on the receiving end of some help from members of a Christian church in Oklahoma.
A missionary delegation made up of six adults and 25 students from Riverview Baptist Church in Bixby, Okla., spent half a day at the Mills County Storehouse performing a variety of tasks, including clearing away weeds, brush and debris along the parking lot, cleaning the food pantry refrigerator, assisting with food distribution and sorting items in the thrift store.
The group spent the week in the Omaha area, partnering with other Baptist churches, primarily in north Omaha. The students coordinated a Vacation Bible School for one church and did some door-to-door evangelizing for another. Their work at the Storehouse was coordinated through Jim Parker, Pastor at Glenwood’s Calvary Baptist Church and a Storehouse volunteer.
“We’re partnering with Jim Parker through the Heartland Church Network,” said Riverview Baptist Church Youth Pastor Jaxson Smith.
Smith said this is the second year the Oklahoma church has taken students on a service-focused mission trip.
“There’s three things we hope to get out of it,” he said. “One is to encourage those we are partnering with. - the churches we’re partnering with and the people we’re interacting with, to be able to encourage them and share the hope of the Gospel with them. And then, we simply want to serve. Jesus says people will know Christians by their love. We want to show our love to others by serving them, helping them.
“To encourage, to serve and thirdly to expose them (students) to what it looks like to do missions, to do outreach, to help people, to encourage people – showing them how to do that at a place that’s not home so that when we do get home, it becomes a part of their daily life.”