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Author: Jeannie Norris

First Chance Auction

Get your friends together for a bidding strategy on these live auction items. They’ll go quickly May 28 at First Chance for White Pants!

Bob Garner Cooks for You

Author, TV personality, and pit-master Bob Garner donates his acclaimed cooking and storytelling skills. Bob will prepare and deliver a traditional barbecue meal for 30, and he’ll serve it with a side of stories from his culinary adventures around the state.

Donated by Bob Garner

 

Emerald Isle Beach Week

Choose your week (October 2020 – March 2021) and your getaway:

  • Oceanfront Breezy, with 5 bedrooms and 5 1/2 baths – see details
  • Soundside Batten the Breeze, with 4 bedrooms and 3 baths – see details
Donated by Emerald Isle Realty

 

Harkers Island Bungalow

Spend a week at North Carolina’s Crystal Coast in this two-bedroom bungalow with water view (valid after Labor Day and before Memorial Day)

There’s lots to do: catch the ferry to Cape Lookout or Shackelford Banks, see the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum, visit the Cape Lookout National Seashore, make a short trip to Beaufort and Morehead City, take a day trip on the ferry to Ocracoke Island

 Donated by Brad and Suzanne Williams

Foster & Adopt

Wake and Pitt counties | Are you interested in fostering or adopting?

We have information sessions to answer your questions about fostering and adopting through Methodist Home for Children.

RSVP is required: Call 888.305.4321, ext.6, or email FosterandAdopt@mhfc.org.

On the agenda:
•  What it means to be a foster parent.
•  What the training & licensing process is all about.
•  What types of children are referred to our foster care / adoption program.
•  Dates for our next MAPP training class.

March
•  March 12, Greenville; 6:30 to 8 p.m.
•  March 24, Raleigh; 6:30 to 8 p.m.

May
•  May 12, Raleigh; 6:30 to 8 p.m.
•  May 18, Greenville; 6:30 to 8 p.m.

July
•  July 16, Raleigh; 6:30 to 8 p.m.
•  July 21, Greenville; 6:30 to 8 p.m.

September
•  Sept. 14, Greenville; 6:30 to 8 p.m.
•  Sept. 16, Raleigh; 6:30 to 8 p.m.

November
•  Nov. 10, Greenville; 6:30 to 8 p.m.
•  Nov. 12, Raleigh; 6:30 to 8 p.m.

Remember to RSVP at FosterandAdopt.mhfc.org!

You are the heart of what we do
– and these are the children who need our help

One boy was found walking alone 1½ miles from home. His parents were drug-addicted and violent – but his 6-year-old heart felt only guilt and grief when he was placed into foster care. Another boy was caught stealing. He’d effectively lost his family a decade earlier when his mother died in her sleep. His father was absent – and this 14-year-old felt “thrown away” when he was delivered to our crisis & assessment center.

Most days, that is how kids come to us, feeling unlovable and incapable. What they need are people who care. That is who we are – Methodist Home for Children and you.

For the young boy, care meant an adoptive family embraced him and understood that, while past trauma may still hurt him, it will not define him. He is theirs. For the teenager, care meant somebody made him meals and expected him to be in his classroom seat every day. It meant somebody from our crisis center drove 260 miles round-trip to check on him when he moved to one of our group homes – an expression of love he had not known in years.

And so it happens, day in and day out, that we care specifically and individually for the children who come to us, knowing that each one wants to be loved and accepted. No matter what age, race, or gender, they all want someone to believe in them, to praise them, to cheer them on, and to set safe limits.

Together we do this, in service to God, so that children can grow up safe and secure. Please give today.

Thank you for being the heart of what we do. We wish you peace and happiness in the New Year.

Ethan, Ella, Jackson

Marc Ridel Creative

ETHAN, AGE 6
ELLA, AGE 5
JACKSON, AGE 4

In the spring, we told you how Tabitha and David adopted their first two children – a brother-sister pair, then 8-year-old Myles and 6-year-old Mia. Now we can introduce the rest of the family – siblings Ethan, Ella, and Jackson.

All five children love trips to the zoo and video games on the weekends. Ethan has the big imagination and likes to tell stories; Jackson has the appetite, always thinking about his next meal. Mia is the chatty one – and Ella is her spunky sidekick. Myles is the quiet one with the sharpest memories of life before foster care.

There were some “oil and water” months integrating two sibling groups under one roof, Tabitha says, “but now they’re all part of the family.”

Daniel & Hazel

Photography by Chalice

DANIEL, AGE 8
HAZEL, AGE 5

Lindsay and Robbie arrived a few minutes early. They were understandably nervous and – this is important – they wanted to be the first to arrive. They claimed a spot in the lobby and watched the door. Every time a family with two children came in they wondered: Is that them? Are these the ones?

Lindsay and Robbie were at Marbles Museum in Raleigh; they were waiting to meet two foster children who had just become eligible for adoption. They hadn’t seen a picture of the kids and were unsure of their ages. “All we knew,” Lindsay says, “is that it would be a boy and a girl. We honestly didn’t know if they were white or black – we didn’t care about that sort of stuff, so we never asked.”

And then Daniel and Hazel walked in with their foster parents – and Lindsay and Robbie say they just knew. “I started tearing up,” says Lindsay. “I said, ‘That’s them and I already love them.’ ” Robbie said the same thing and together they walked over to introduce themselves.

Fast forward two years.

Now they are a close-knit family of four people and three dogs. Daniel’s in second grade, Hazel just started kindergarten. And even though their lives are full with school, camp, and family outings, they all dream of one day living on a farm. Deep cords of love – present before they met – hold them together. The only dissent came on adoption day.

As papers were signed and the seal put in place, the judge asked Hazel if everything looked right. Her answer was quick and clear: No.

Pointing to her new last name and she said, “This is all wrong. My name should be Unicorn Princess. Hazel Unicorn Princess.”

God bless the child.

Josh

Marc Ridel Creative
Josh, 9 These are the things that make Josh happy: Trips to Bojangles’ for Bo-Berry biscuits; afternoons riding his scooter at the park; routines like haircuts with Dad, making breakfast with Mom, reading together at bedtime. Josh came to Amy and Richard at age 7, a zombie-fighting, Hot Wheels-racing, noisy burst of boyish energy – who guarded his heart and craved a family. “Josh desperately wanted a mom and a dad,” Amy says. “He would give up playing with his most favorite toy just to receive undivided attention from us.” So they folded him into their lives – parents Amy and Richard, sisters Brianna and Alyssa – and gave him a family that will be his forever. “We cannot imagine life without him,” Richard says.

Advent, week 4

By Bruce Stanley, president / CEO

At a recent Saturday funeral, I heard Dr. Charles Wilson speak of Martin Luther’s teaching on “the left-handed power of God.” The next morning I heard Rev. Christi Dye speak of Matthew’s Gospel “burying the lead on the story” by locating Jesus’ birth as the sixth action in a subordinate clause in a compound sentence.

Both beautifully made the point that the entry of God into human history was purposefully humble and ordinary.

Manus dextra is Latin for right handed. From that we derive our word dexterity. To be dexterous is to be wonderfully skilled and polished, worthy of emulation and adoration. Manus sinistra is Latin for left handed. From that we derive the word sinister. Though no one is certain how, over time left handed came to mean underhanded, plotting, and devious.

Martin Luther knew his Latin! He made no mistake talking about God’s left-handed use of power. He stripped the phrase manus sinistra of its devious connotation. In a startling and refreshing way he describes for us how the King of Kings entered into human form not to display dexterity with sword or political power. Rather he came as love, humility, self-effacement, sacrifice, and service. He entered unexpectedly from a direction in which no one was looking!

In an unattributed piece on Luther, Macedonian Ministry speaks of God’s transformative power continuing to be manifested not where the world is looking. Our headlines don’t “bury the lead.” All forms of media point to power, used and misused. It is right-hand power exercised in brutal form that commands our attention. God’s left-hand power, even now triumphant, oft goes unnoticed.

Macedonian Ministry asks us to remember the year 1809. Right-handed power was transforming the world as Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte led his armies across the Austrian Empire. The battles of Aspern-Essling, Eckmuhl, and Wagram were going to be the ones that shaped history. They have, however, become mere footnotes. While cannons boomed and swords flashed across Europe, unnoticed were women giving birth. In 1809, God’s left-handed power delivered to us Alfred Lord Tennyson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe, and Charles Darwin. And completely unnoticed in Kentucky of all places was born Abraham Lincoln.

It is not the army of Caesar Augustus that continues; nor does the might of Emperor Bonaparte. Rather, what continues is the loving work of the church of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God for Jesus’ life with us and death for us. Let us all take the left hand of the one seated at the right hand of the Father, and overwhelm the world with humility, service, sacrifice, and love.

Merry Christmas

Read Advent, week 1
Read Advent, week 2
Read Advent, week 3
Read Advent, week 4

Advent, week 3

By Bruce Stanley, president / CEO

And Mary said, “for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation … he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” Luke 1:49-53

With the Christmas season comes the release of new feature films. One of them is the latest installment in the Terminator franchise. Linda Hamilton is back and supposedly prepared as rigorously for this one as she did the first. It took nearly a year of diet, aerobics, and weight lifting to get prepared. I was reminded, as I read of her renewed commitment to fitness, what Ellen DeGeneres had said years ago when the animated film Finding Nemo came out. Ellen is the voice for the Dory character and did a comedic bit about it on her show. A guest asked her about the movie and she went into an extended riff about how demanding it was for her – that she’d never been a strong swimmer and had to swim lap after lap to prepare, that she wasn’t good at holding her breath and had to build up to that, that she now knew what Linda Hamilton had gone through. Not all rewarding experiences demand the same amount of preparation.

If observed seriously, Advent demands difficult preparation. This third Sunday in Advent is observed as Gaudete, the Sunday we thank God for the joy that is to come. In many if not most Advent wreaths, the day’s candle stands out because it is rose colored or pink. Its very appearance brightens before its wick is kindled. Do not let the pink JOY candle deceive you. As Mary makes clear in the Magnificat, Jesus cannot enter into our lives without our honest self-examination and repentance. We have inner work to do before we get to joy.

Mary, even as she thanks and praises God, names the things that clutter our hearts and take up space where joy in Jesus should reside – pride of place or achievement, belief we have achieved on our own, reliance on material wealth, and considering ourselves better than others. This is a long and serious list that must be addressed. I expect if we are honest, this list of clutter is common within us all. We need to be Linda and not Ellen during this month. We have work to do between now and Christmas Day.

Only when hearts are truly humbled can joy enter in. So let us all commit to daily disciplines of scripture reading, prayer, and acts of kindness. Let us look to serve others and not be served ourselves.

Read Advent, week 1
Read Advent, week 2
Read Advent, week 3
Read Advent, week 4