Missions
Team Leader:  Chuck Place

     

Local Missions

National Missions

International Missions

Local Missions

ALANON Al-Anon (which includes Alateen for younger members) offers strength and hope for friends and families of problem drinkers.  Facilities are provided for meetings. Click here to learn more about ALANON
Children in Crisis In 2002, a group of community leaders including members of St. Simon's-on-the-Sound Episcopal Church, Shalimar United Methodist Church, and the Department of Children and Family Services (DCF) identified a critical need for additional foster care facilities for abused and neglected children in the four-county area of Northwest Florida (Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, and Walton Counties). In 2003, Children in Crisis, Inc., a non-profit 501 (c)(3) charity, was established to raise and manage the funds to build, staff, and operate The Children's Neighborhood, a residential style foster care neighborhood. From a small grass-roots group of individuals the organization has grown to over 100 members in 2006, including CPAs, architects, attorneys, educators, builders, employees of DCF, and volunteers from the Guardian Ad Litem program. Church contact Mack Gay. Click here for volunteer opportunities Click here to learn more about the Children in Crisis
Cold Night Shelter A collaborative effort, spearheaded by the First Presbyterian Church of Fort Walton Beach, in which seven churches provide a safe haven when the temperature drops to 40 degrees or below. Volunteers provide a hot dinner and breakfast, shower facilities, and a place to lie down.
Habitat for Humanity Habitat for Humanity International is a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry. It seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action. We are committed to Habitat for Humanity House. We have recently completed two homes on Bob-O-Link Street in Fort Walton Beach.  Both were funded through SUMC.   Another house is being built in Fort Walton Beach for a member of our church.  If you can help in any capacity contact Christy, 315-0025 ext. 3. Click here to visit the national Habitat for Humanity site.	Click here for more pictures
The Judge Ben Gordon Jr. Family Visitation Center Many children, who are separated from one or both of their parents, need a neutral, pleasant environment where they can spend quality time with their parent(s). The Family Visitation Center offers children who have witnessed or experienced violence, abuse, or trauma, a safe place to spend time with a parent. The Judge Ben Gordon, Jr. Family Visitation Center makes an extraordinarily painful situation more tolerable for everyone involved. Volunteers are needed (a few hours per month) to be trained to oversee the visits between children and their non-custodial parents. Church Contact:  Sharon Rogers 850- 609-1850 Click here to learn more about the Family Visitation Center.
Missions Christmas Tree At Christmastime, we receive requests from local organizations to provide gifts for deserving children.  Volunteers purchase and wrap the gifts that are requested and then the gifts are given to the requesting organizations to be distributed.  The cost of the gifts range from $25.00 and up. Church contact:  Vicki Bryars
Okaloosa Walton Homeless Continuum of Care/ Opportunity, Inc. A consortium of governmental agencies and other interested community stakeholders dedicated to serving the needs of our area's most vulnerable citizens: the homeless and near-homeless. Services are provided for meals, emergency shelter, transitional and permanent housing, showers, laundry service, clothing, assistance in job readiness and placement, financial counseling, health care, mental health and substance abuse treatment, haircuts, linkage to mainstream benefits, and other resources Click here to learn more about Opportunity, Inc.
Okaloosa Coalition for the Homeless –Fresh Start The Okaloosa Coalition on the Homeless, Inc. FRESH START Program is a Transitional Housing Facility providing six months of temporary housing and life skills training for drug free working families, single women and single women with children.  Our program helps individuals regain their self sufficiency while maintaining their dignity.  For information please call 243-5648. Click here to learn more about the Okaloosa Coalition for the Homeless –Fresh Start
Sharing and Caring This agency provides food and assistance for rent, medicine, transportation, clothing, and layettes.  Services are provided based need and funds availability.  Non-perishable food may be donated the first Sunday each month and is collected in the narthex.  Volunteers are needed on irregular basis and need to be trained.
Shelter House This organization serves the survivors of domestic violence and their children throughout Okaloosa and Walton counties.  Their goal is to break the cycle of domestic violence by providing support, including emergency shelter to victims of domestic violence; education and advocacy; and to promote community awareness. Volunteers needed for office work, sorting donations, landscaping, painting, and Board sub committees.  Contact:  Michelle Sperzel, 243-1201, or  info@shelterhousenwfl.org Click here to learn more about the Shelter House

National Missions

Alabama Rural Ministry
Alabama Rural Ministry coordinates home repair efforts and children’s day camps in rural parts of Alabama. they are interdenominational but are connected to the United Methodist Church.

Click here to learn more about the Alabama Rural Ministry

Disaster Response-USA United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR)
When disaster strikes, the local church usually provides the first response. This basic understanding - that disaster response is local - helps form a foundation for UMCOR's national training and response. First and foremost, UMCOR is a resource for the local response.

Click here to learn more about Disaster Response USA

Henderson Settlement
A Methodist-affiliated organization whose purpose is to meet the basic human needs of people in southeast Kentucky and northeast Tennessee.

Click here to learn more about the Henderson Settlement

One Great Hour of Sharing – United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR)
Gifts to this offering underwrite UMCOR's "costs of doing business." That helps us keep our promise that 100 percent of every other gift you make to a specific UMCOR project can be spent on that project-not on home office costs. Offering gifts over and above those used to cover administrative costs are channeled where they're most needed. UMCOR's specialized ministries-responding in disaster, fighting hunger, alleviating poverty, providing relief supplies around the world, and offering hospitality to immigrants and refugees-all assist the most vulnerable people whose need is greatest.
 
                   Click here to learn more about the United Methodist Committee on Relief

United Methodist Volunteers in Mission
United Methodist Volunteers In Mission (UMVIM), Southeast Jurisdiction (SEJ) the short-term mission agency of the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church.  UMVIM exists to promote, encourage, and enable Christians to exemplify “Christian Love in Action” through short-term mission service in the United States and abroad.

Click here to learn more about UMVIMSEJ

UWF/PJC Wesley Foundation
 The Wesley Foundation is a United Methodist campus ministry providing programs for all campus-related persons with an emphasis on the needs of students, both graduate and undergraduate. It is a community of persons committed to worship, learning, serving and growing with each other regardless of ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital or economic status, handicapping condition, or other human differences. Our common bond is God's love shown through Jesus Christ and lived in our human relationships, individually, in the larger society, and with all creation.

Waterfront Mission
The Waterfront Rescue Mission was created to spread the Good News of Salvation through Christ by serving the needs of the poor, addicted, abused and homeless.  Through various programs, they help these men and women improve the quality of their lives by producing real change through the love of Christ.  They are determined to provide compassionate help, individual attention and a plan for success.

The Waterfront Mission is supported through communion rail offerings.

Click here to learn more about the Waterfront Mission

White Christmas-United Methodist Children’s Home
For more than 75 years, the White Christmas Offering has given United Methodists in two conferences a way to partner with us to provide vital services to children and families in areas from North Alabama to the panhandle of Florida.

Contributions from White Christmas are essential to the life and strength of this ministry. Each church establishes its own time of taking up a special offering for UMCH, and many churches also host additional fundraising events and activities to help increase the church's overall giving to the White Christmas offering.

If you are a United Methodist and attend a church in the North Alabama Conference or in the Alabama-West Florida Conference, you will likely be presented an opportunity to give to the White Christmas offering - and it can happen any time throughout the year! We hope that you will choose to invest in the future of the children we serve.

Click here to find out more about United Methodist Children’s Home

International Missions

We provide financial support to six missionary families worldwide. Please feel free to email them and show your support!

Central Conference Pension Initiative 
This initiative helps to provide a pension to approximately 2,000 retired pastors, lay workers and surviving spouses in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.

Click here to learn more about the Central Conference Pension Initiative

Curamericas Global formerly known as Andean Rural Health
Curamericas Global, Inc., formerly Andean Rural Health Care, was founded in 1983 by Duke University and Johns Hopkins graduate Henry Perry III, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H and Alice Weldon, Ph.D. Curamericas Global was created with the goal of establishing primary health care programs that are responsive to the health needs of the community, improving child survival within the community, and building the national and local capacity of health service providers.

Click here to learn more about Curamericas Global

Friendship Centre of India
Friendship Centre India provides humanitarian and spiritual services amongst the poor and destitute masses, for rebuilding their shattered lives, as per the Great Commission.

 Click here to learn more about Friendship Centre of India

 Heifer Project International
The Heifer Project is dedicated to relieving global hunger and poverty by providing gifts of livestock and plants, as well as educating in sustainable agriculture, to financially-disadvantaged families around the world.

Click here for more information about The Heifer Project.

Wakisa Ministry
The mission of Wakisa Ministry is to provide love, care, shelter and counseling support to traumatized youth, mainly young girls with unwanted pregnancies and young people traumatized by war in Uganda.

Click here to learn more about Wakisa Ministry

World Hunger - United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR)
Through UMCOR's World Hunger/Poverty program UMCOR not only supplies food for the hungry but also helps poor countries move forward with development. In its long-term effort to eradicate poverty, UMCOR provides seeds, tools, and training to enable people to grow their own food. It also helps people start small businesses and supports water, reforestation, literacy, and health programs.

Click here to learn more about World Hunger

Church Sponsored Mission Trips

Out of Country Missions
(Last five years)

Click here to learn more about Casa Hogar Elim

Dangriga, Belize 2008
There were three mission focal areas for this mission trip.  Additional work was accomplished on the Epworth United Methodist manse, nurture was provided to the church school, and outreach through music ministry in Dangriga and River City.

Belize City, Hattieville, and Dangriga, Belize, 2007
There were three mission areas for this mission trip.  In Belize City, additional work was completed on the Dorothy Menendez’s children’s home.  In Hattieville, all floor coverings were removed and replaced as well as the interior painted in the Golden Haven Retirement Home.  Other routine maintenance was also completed.  In Dangriga, repair was accomplished on the Epworth United Methodist Church manse and nurture was provided for the church school.

Belize City and Hattieville, Belize, 2006
There were two mission areas for this mission trip.  In Belize City, repair to the interior of the Dorothy Menendez’s children’s home was completed and concrete sidewalks were poured.  In Hattieville, the outside of the Golden Haven Retirement Home was completely painted.  Other routine maintenance was also completed.  Nurture was provided to the residence of both facilities.

Belize City, Belize, 2005
The mission area for this mission trip was the Dorothy Menendez’s children’s home.  The interior received major repair due to termite damage.  Nurture was provided to the children living in the home.

Domestic Missions

Red Bird Mission - Beverly, Kentucky, 2009, 2008, 2007
Red Bird Mission and Clinic have been providing ministries in Beverly, Kentucky, in the Appalachian Mountains since 1921.  Today the need remains critical in this isolated, rural distressed area.  Chronic poverty, lack of jobs, poor housing, and rugged mountainous terrain provide obstacles to a fuller life for the residents of this area.  Red Bird Mission and Clinic strives to meet these needs through ministry in five areas:  Education, Health and Wellness, Community Outreach, Economic Opportunity, and Community Housing Improvement. 

We are excited to support to Beverly, Kentucky. Red Bird Mission allows us to help those in need. Red Bird provides mission activities for all physical abilities and skill levels. This trip provides an inexpensive way to really touch those living in poverty.

Click here to learn more about Red Bird Mission

Hurricane Relief
Mission teams were sent to areas along the gulf coast that were devastated by hurricanes.  The annual youth mission trips and many monthly adult trips have helped to rebuild homes and lives from Gulf Breeze to New Orleans.