The Andersons have been busy in 2023! We began to catch a vision in Ahoskie, North Carolina, where we work with an encourager church, First Baptist Ahoskie, to reimagine the space that had once been the First Presbyterian Church.

The church could no longer sustain congregational vitality and had decided it needed to close, but the few remaining members of the church, in coordination with the Presbytery who owns the building, wanted ministry to continue in the space. Enter the leadership of the Roanoke Chowan Christian Women’s Job Corps, who moved their site operations from the First Baptist Church over to the First Presbyterian Church, now renamed The Gathering Place. The Andersons have been busy helping to renovate and update a fellowship hall with new paint, flooring, and lighting. The Gathering Place houses, in addition to The Christian Women’s Job Corps program, a food pantry, a clothing and household goods ministry, a piano studio, and a monthly communitywide ecumenical worship service. All of this has unfolded within the last twelve months, and one of the biggest additions to the ministry of the Andersons is the work of Woody and Beverly Baker, Global Service Corps mission volunteers.

The Bakers were commissioned at the CBF General Assembly in June in Atlanta. They are working in Ahoskie to help not only in The Gathering Place but in other efforts such as English as Second Language classes, plans to start a Christian Men’s Job Corps program, and other opportunities for housing and benevolence needs.

Meanwhile, the community of Conetoe (kuh-KNEE-tuh) in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, has been busy with summer camp programs through the Conetoe Family Life Center. Food distribution programs for low-income senior adult families are continuing priorities for us. Hosting two mission teams in Conetoe this summer has proved beneficial in getting construction work done on agricultural buildings for the Center, as well as helping to staff summer camps for the more than fifty children who attend the 8:00 – 3:00 program each weekday. Helping in the 27-acre garden has been something that the children have been a part of. Seeing them go into the fields with their buckets ready to harvest is quite a sight!

Partnerships are so important! We do not work alone, but with the support of so many who come alongside us to pray, to give, to come, and to get to know us and the work we do.

People just like you who are with us on this journey. You are vital to the transformative work of field personnel around the globe seeking to bring the kingdom closer and closer to earth as it is in heaven.

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