 A Christ Centered Sense of Direction |
The First Presbyterian Church 403 Washington Street, Watertown, NY 13601 Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry, Senior Pastor Tel: 315/782-1750 Fax: 315/782-2360 |
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Mission and Outreach First Presbyterian Church supports a wide variety of mission and outreach projects, both local and global in scope. The Outreach Council is responsible for allocating financial resources for these worthy causes. The Mission Council co-ordinates the human resources needed for these ministries. Piecemakers This group meets on various Mondays throughout the year. We make quilts, knitted caps and mittens, and other fabric items. No sewing experience is required. Every child who comes to the Victims Assistance Center of Jefferson County may choose a quilt to keep and act as their security blanket. Quilts are also sent to Africa. This groups has sent items to other agencies in the Presbytery as needed. Another ministry of the Piecemakers has been baby bundles for military families at Fort Drum, including baby sweaters, caps, booties and crib quilts. We are proud to announce that Piecemakers received the Community Spirit Award from the Victims Assistance Center of Jefferson County at a presentation on May 9, 2002. Well done! Knitting Group This dedicated group meets at 7pm on the last Monday of the month. They are knitting caps for soldiers to wear under their helmets. The goal is to provide caps for 20,000 troops deploying to Afghanistan. There is a specific pattern they follow. For more information, or to make a donation, please contact the church office. Radio Ministry Our Sunday worship services are broadcast live at 10am on 1240 WATN AM radio. Copies of the church bulletin are mailed to shut-ins so they may follow along. If you would like to receive the bulletin, please contact the church office. The broadcast is also recorded, and copies are distributed upon request. In November, 2006 this ministry celebrated 65 years of continuous radio broadcasts, sharing the Word and music with our shut-ins and the community. Our services are also broadcast via the internet live at 10am on Sunday mornings. Please see our sermons page for the live stream link, a copy of the current church bulletin, recordings of past services and the text of many sermons. Watertown Urban Mission Our church and 29 others in the Watertown area support this organization, located on Factory Street in Watertown. Two lay persons and one clergy from each church make up the board of directors. Among the programs run by the Urban Mission:
Dollar Dinners Starting in January 2006, our congregation began to host dollar dinners on behalf of the Watertown Urban Mission. These were designed to help families cope with the soaring costs of heating their homes. With grant assistance from The Northern New York Community Foundation, three other church locations were also involved. For a dollar, each person attending received a hot, nutritious plate of food. In 2007, the program expanded to eight sites, providing dinners approximately twice a week. For 2009-2010, we will host dinners on the fourth Sunday of each month from November to March. We serve from 4:30-6pm and takeouts are available. If you wish to volunteer, please contact Linya Bell. Neighborhood Revitalization During the summer of 2004, First Presbyterian provided funding and guidance for six high school interns to conduct a door-to-door survey of the neighborhood bordering the church to its south and east. The purpose of the survey was to assist Neighbors of Watertown in determining the needs of this area, and determine which grants might be available to assist landlords and homeowners with repairs to the homes and apartments in this neighborhood. Further studies continued with nine students in the summer of 2005. As a result, Watertown received a grant for over $1 million dollars to renovate homes. In 2006, the program was deemed valuable enough for Neighbors of Watertown to take over supervision of the students. First Presbyterian will continue to facilitate this worthy project. Habitat for Humanity This organization works to create affordable housing for local families by renovating single-family dwellings in partnership with the recipient family. We will have a work day on Sunday, October 18th from 1-4:30pm at the North Michigan Avenue home site. North Country Children's Clinic In 2004 First Pres voted to begin a three year funding commitment to help the clinic move to new quarters on Arsenal Street. The clinic provides sliding-scale fee medical and dental care to children from needy families. Ministries in the North Country The summer of 2009 marked the first mission trip to St. Lawrence County to deal with rural poverty in a local setting with this group organized by the Presbytery of Northern New York. We spent a long weekend rehabilitating a farm house for a family with a disabled mother. To read of further details please see our blog. Mission Trips to Hurricane Katrina areas In April 2006, a 14-person adult team traveled to Gulfport, MS to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina. During their week-long stay, the began by repairing a roof for one homeowner. At another home they replaced sheetrock, installed telephone wiring, and replaced plumbing fixtures and pipes for two bathrooms. Two members of the team worked at the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance warehouse near Biloxi, performing computer data entry to help track the movement of relief and repair supplies. A second trip with 6 adults was undertaken in November, 2006 and renovations were made to a parsonage. A third trip with 7 youth and 3 adults was conducted in February, 2007. Three different projects were undertaken on this visit. Check out the pictures on our photo gallery. Our latest trip was to New Orleans from June 30 to July 8, 2009 with our senior high community youth group. We partnered with Operation Southern Comfort to repair a house in the Lower Ninth Ward, work on a former Walgreens store being converted to a church and prepare a site for a new home to be built. For more details on this trip, please see our blog. Mission Trips to Mexico The fifth annual Senior High Youth Group trip to Mexico to build houses was held July 1-9, 2008. Rev. Matt Schultz led 44 adults and youth to the Tijuana area to participate in the Amor Ministries project where 3 homes were built. Check out the pictures on our photo gallery. A film documenting the trip was also made and premiered on August 17, 2008. For more details on the making of the film, and future showings, please check the IMDB entry or the film website. Malawi Partnership Churches of Africa are increasing in membership as never before. It is estimated there will be more than 400 million Christians on the continent by the year 2000. Yet, the challenges facing African society are greater than ever before. Economic gains made in the 1960s and 1970s have been negated in the last decade. Ethnic rivalries often flare into costly warfare. College graduates flee to find employment overseas. The health situation is more critical than ever, especially with the devastation of AIDS. Yet there has been a sense of failure of the old ways of conducting church mission in Africa. As made clear by the Rev. Dr. Augustine Musopole of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian as quoted in the 1994 Mission Yearbook "the old ways unwittingly created at least two dynamics which aren't helpful today. One is dependency, which at some point hampers the development of the partner church. The other is an assumption of a Western model which may not be appropriate to an African culture." The African churches say "Let's work as partners. Let us tell you what we need instead of you deciding that yourselves." This thinking has led to the establishment of a partnership between the Presbytery of Northern New York and the Synod of Livingstonia, Church of Central Africa Presbyterian. The relationship began when 2 members of our congregation, Fred and Nella Stone, served as medical missionaries. Members of our congregation also spearheaded an effort to send a vehicle to Malawi. Since 2000, when the partnership was formalized we:
Presbyterian Border Ministry Presbyterian Border Ministry (PBM) is a cooperative endeavor of the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico and the Presbyterian Church (USA). Its mission is to share the Gospel in Mexican cities along the 2,000 mile border with the United States: serving the needs of spirit, body, and mind in 7 Ministries with multiple sites stretching from the Gulf to the Pacific. The two sister churches have covenanted to bring the message of God to this uncommon international community, a region immersed in Mexican culture but dominated by the US economy, a locale of rich heritage and enormous potential, yet characterized by vast communities cobbled together from discarded scraps. For more information please click here. |