News
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Articles
1.30.2019 - Faith Chest Milestone Celebrated
1.13.2019 - Hymn Debut Celebrates Baptism of Christ
12.25.2018 - Sights of Christmas
12.24.2018 - Christmas Outreach
12.14.2018 - St. Mark's Hosts Successful Blood Drive
12.9.2018 - Kids Night Out!
11.18.2018 - Packing for Operation Christmas Child
11.6.2018 - All Saints Day 2018
10.28.2018 - Pumpkins!
10.18.2018 - Celebrating Blanket Sunday
10.18.2018 - Harvest Home Celebration
10.14.2018 - Blessing of the Keys
9.23.2018 - Bazaar Raises Funds for Charity
8.19.2018 - Milestone: Praising God for More than 70 years
7.17.2018 - Family Fishing Derby
7.9.2018 - Photos from July 4 Hospitality
7.9.2018 - Celebrating Independence Day with St. Mark’s
6.28.2018 - Photos from Wizards & Wonders VBS
6.10.2018 - Progressions Milestone
5.6.2018 - Three Nominated for Council Seats
5.6.2018 - Successful Meal Packaging Event at St. Mark's
Living in central Pennsylvania, the weekend of February 3-4 was especially exciting for us. We have always had great collection bins (giant footballs) for the Souper Bowl food drive. But, this year, we added another incentive for giving…we labeled one football “Eagles” and the other one “Patriots.” Then, we asked our congregation members to put their offerings into the bin of the team for whom they were rooting!
Well, you can see the results in the accompanying photos!
Because of this friendly competition (Eagles over Patriots 32/21), we collected more food items than we have in years - a grand total of 541!
In addition to finding out who the favored team was in our congregation, we went outside the church seeking donations at our local Sam’s Club. The weather was at a low of 16° when we started at 9:00 a.m., but warmed up to about 33° by the time we left at 2:00. While there, we collected 303 individual food items and $260 in monetary donations. Folks were really friendly and some even left and then returned with more food!
Again, Eagles fans predominated. Though there was one Pennsylvanian who was solidly behind the Patriots (granted, he was wearing a Steelers jacket and hat)! WE are extremely thankful that Sam’s allowed us to set up out there for the day!
We are also thankful to other stores who helped us out, too. We received gift cards from Wegmans Food Store, Giant Markets, and Weis Markets. With those, we were able to purchase 85 more cans of food! We more than tripled the amount of our usual donations:
With all this, St. Mark’s was overjoyed to contribute 537 food items to the Lycoming County Food Bank, 4 #10 cans of vegetables to St. Anthony’s Center, and over $413.16 to Shepherd of the Streets.
In this, as in all things we are thankful for God’s guidance in all we do.