Mennonite
Central
Committee

MCC school kits part of giving at Native Assembly

Marla Pierson Lester
August 10, 2006

ATMORE, Ala. In this small town in southern Alabama, the home of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, a Native American Mennonite congregation gathered school kits for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and spread word of the effort through the community.

"I got my grandkids involved. I got my co-workers at work involved in it," said Janette Beck, a member of Poarch Community Church who works at the Best Western hotel in Atmore.

Fellow employees brought her school supplies. "They were enthused. Something like that, they're really interested in trying to help," she said. She told her grandchildren that there were children who "don't have what you have. You need to fill one of these bags and send it across the world to somebody who needs it."

Poarch Community Church and other congregations present at Native Assembly, a gathering of Native American Mennonites from Canada and the United States in Atmore in late July, donated more than 85 school kits to MCC.

Participants brought kits from as far away as Manitoba, Ontario, Montana and Oklahoma. During an evening worship time at the assembly, dozens of people streamed up front bringing school kits. Pastor Frank James of Chinle, Ariz., offered a prayer of dedication in Navajo.

"They're a lot like an offering, gifts given from the heart to express love and hopefully help love be felt by others," said Steve Cheramie Risingsun, pastor of Poarch Community Church.

A vision

Poarch Community Church "really caught a vision" for collecting the kits, which contain notebooks, pencils, a ruler, an eraser and colored pencils, Risingsun said. The church watched an MCC video, "Gifts to Share: School Kits." When children and youth saw children in the video who had received kits, they were inspired; Risingsun remembers asking if they would each prepare one kit. "They'd say, 'No, I'm bringing five. I'm bringing six.' They wanted to do more than one each."

Laura Sells, 14, was one of those, saying she would compile five. "We've been talking about it in Sunday school," she said. "I wanted to help the kids out."

It wasn't only youth who got involved. "I just wanted to be helpful to them. I thank the Lord we're able, physically and financially, to do such," said Julia Ann Stacey, who made three school kits. "It was fun. It was just like going to school to pick up (supplies) for my children," said Stacey, who is now a grandmother.

In addition to the school kits that congregations brought to Native Assembly, children also compiled kits as part of the children's program at the assembly.

Sent around the world

The kits will be sent around the world to children who need these supplies, explained Linda Furry, who was part of a group from Harrisonburg Mennonite Church and Weavers Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va., that attended the assembly. The group helped organize the children's program and brought some of the items for kits the children could pack.

Children assembled notebooks, pencils, rulers and other items into school kits and wrote notes to the children who would receive them.

School kits are MCC's most requested item. When parents and schools cannot afford basic school supplies, notebooks and pencils become precious commodities. Students use both sides of each sheet of paper. Pencils are worn down to a nub. MCC ships tens of thousands of school kits each year. This year, some 26,000 school kits will be shipped to Jordan. Thousands more have been requested for Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua.

From April 2005 through March 2006, MCC shipped 119,449 kits to countries including Iraq, Jordan, Honduras, Sudan, Bosnia and Burkina Faso.

It is donations like those at Native Assembly that make this work possible, John Stoesz, director of MCC Central States, told audience members at Native Assembly thanking them for their gifts.

Sharing gifts is part of Native American gatherings and ties into a culture of giving and generosity. Lawrence Hart, an MCC U.S. board member and Southern Cheyenne peace chief, noted that the generosity embedded in his culture parallels the Christian tradition of giving God first fruits, which underscores that everything we have belongs to God.

One disaster to another

In addition to school kits, MCC was presented with a blanket with a label created by a child in Point-aux-Chenes, a southern Louisiana town heavily impacted by last year's hurricanes. Risingsun said the blanket is meant to be given to someone impacted by the May 27 earthquake in Java, Indonesia. A tsunami also struck the island of Java in July.

"It's from the heart of a people from one disaster (Hurricane Katrina), to the heart of a people in another disaster," Risingsun said.

After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a number of families were sleeping in their shrimp boats, Risingsun said. Homes had thick layers of mold. "MCC came and they brought truckloads of mattresses, canned meat, health kits and other things that were a real help," Risingsun said.

The blanket recognizes MCC's commitment in the U.S. South, but also its work abroad and it's meant to be a symbol of hope to another community recovering from the fury of natural disaster.

"As God has brought us through," Risingsun said, "God will bring them through too."