Congregants and missioners from the New Hope United Methodist Church of Oklahoma City were raising the roof on a home in Indianola last week.
The group, in collaboration with Delta Grace of Sunflower, took some time away from their regular vocations to put their love into action and inspire some new hope by conducting a few home repairs for homeowner Cynthia Thomas.
Thomas said she has been on Delta Grace’s waiting list for about three years and was both surprised and elated when she received the call from the Rev. Veronica Pritchard that she was next in line. The repair project that the carpentering crew carried out was to fix a leaky roof that resulted from a severe windstorm.
The crew, which was one of 23 teams to visit the Delta so far this year, completed the work over one weekend before heading back home on October 8. Thomas took to social media to express her gratitude to the missioners and Delta Grace.
The Rev. Pritchard said not very many people go to the lengths that Thomas did to say thank you. She said out of the 132 plus homes that they have worked on, only about five or six homeowners have responded with that degree of gratitude.
A spokesperson for the Oklahoma group said the collection of Christian carpenters make annual trips to help out those who may be in need of a little aid by way of a hammer.
According to the Rev. Pritchard, 333 missioners from nine different states have visited thus far in 2018 and have worked on 26 different homes within a 30-mile radius of Sunflower. In addition to Indianola and Sunflower, work has been done on homes in Shaw, Boyle and Moorhead.
Delta Grace is a year-round mission located in Sunflower that functions as a hub for mission volunteers from across the country. Different mission teams make their way to the Delta each year to work on homes in need of repair, for people in need of hope and deserving of being shown God’s love.
The volunteers pay a fee to come here to work and the monies they pay are never enough to cover the work or buy the materials necessary for the work they do, so Delta Mission also relies on assistance from the Leflore County United Way, grants from The Kings’ Daughters and Sons Circle #2 of Greenville and the national United Methodist Church as well as lots of local community support.
For more information on Delta Grace and how you can help, contact them at P.O. Box 218 Sunflower, 38778 or Pastor Veronica Pritchard at P.O. Box 902, c/o Sunflower United Methodist Church.
