David’s Dialogues

November- Not About Us

Dear Friend,

With the Thanksgiving season comes an attitude of gratefulness and service.  This past month, we focused on several different projects that brought attention to various service opportunities around the world.

First, we joined with the New Life community congregation to participate in a program called Rise Against Hunger.  This is an organization that travels around to different churches and organizations to spread awareness about world hunger and pack non-perishable meals to be distributed globally.  This year, 85 volunteers came together to pack over 24,000 meals and raised over $7,000 in the process.  This will be enough to feed 66 Haitian children for a year.  Check out the video at the bottom for a recap of the event.

The second weekend of November was the 2017 Donut Dash 5k!  This was my second year organizing and leading the event, which has been quite an undertaking.  In order to draw more student participants, we worked through the permitting process to have the 5k on the Drillfield of Virginia Tech.  Although a bit chilly, we still had a fantastic event.  We had 43 runners, over 25 volunteers, and raised $1062.85.  We met our $1,000 goal!  I was very excited to see nearly twice the participation as last year, and hope the event will continue to grow in the future.  Once again, we had people outside of our church participate, increasing the chances for Kingdom relationships to begin.

The Saturday before Thanksgiving, we partnered with the marching band at Virginia Tech to conduct a food and donations drive to benefit a Montgomery County food shelter.  The event, called Hokies for the Hungry, took place before the VT vs. Pittsburg football game, where groups of NLCF members and mini-bands roamed through the tailgating parking lots seeking financial and canned food donations.  This year, we raised 3,475 cans, and a record-setting $12,496 in cash!

Lastly, we participated in the Operation Christmas Child program and packed nearly 66 boxes as a church.  This is a great opportunity to have some fun and bless others with the Gospel message across the world.  For a complete recap of all our “Not-About-Us November” events, check out this article I wrote online.

Besides all the service-related opportunities this month, I also attended a week-long training in Maryland in preparation for the church plant. Even though I will be on the team of people staying in Blacksburg, I still found the information and networking connections extremely valuable!  I also had the chance to teach on Sunday, November 5^th as part of our Acts series.  Check out the video here!

In the spirit of thankfulness, I am extremely thankful for you as we continue into the Holiday season.  I hope you have a blessed Christmas and joyous start to the New Year.

In Christ,
David