First Connections Summer 2024

SUMMER 2024

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IN THIS ISSUE page

By Forrest White

Pastor Charley

Prevenient Grace

The Calling of a Bishop Tom Berlin remembers with great clarity the walk from his professor’s office to his dorm room at Virginia Tech University. More than 40 years have passed since that day. Yet, it’s as if his mind recorded every step.

Bee Stings and Dog Bites

He showed up to a meeting with Marshall Fishwick to discuss the topic for a required paper that would account for 40 percent of his grade. It was a communications class. “A throwaway elective,” Berlin thought.

After a bit of small talk, the professor jumped straight to a big question.

Calm in the Storm

Fishwick: So, what are you going to do with your life?

Berlin: I’m in accounting.

Fishwick: Do you like it?

(No one had ever asked him before.)

Berlin: No. Fishwick: Then, why are you doing it?

Berlin: My dad’s a CPA. He makes a really good living. I know I can get a job.

Fishwick: But you don’t like it?

Berlin: Not at all.

Fishwick: So you’re going to spend the rest of your life doing something you don’t like for money?

(No one had ever put it that way before.)

What We Did That Summer

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First Things First

Rev. Charley Reeb Senior Pastor

A publication of First United Methodist Church 72 Lakeland Morton Drive Lakeland, FL 33803 Church office 863-686-3163 firstumc.org

Dear Church Family, This edition of First Connections is full of insight and inspiration.

You will get to know our Bishop and read his pivotal call story.

The article will help you see why everyone is so excited to have Tom Berlin as our Bishop!

You will also read about our own Trish Warren who is the Disaster Response Coordinator for the Florida Annual Conference. She has some good advice and helpful information as we face another hurricane season.

In addition, you will have fun reading about the interesting summer jobs some of our staff had when they were younger.

PASTORS Charley Reeb Senior Pastor Andy Whitaker-Smith Associate Pastor Nicki Taylor Associate Pastor

My first summer job was in a church, so no surprise there. I did work for a restaurant one summer but that was short lived!

I learned quickly I wasn’t cut out for the restaurant business.

However, it did give me a new appreciation for those who work in that industry.

There is much to enjoy in this edition of First Connections!

Be sure to share this magazine with a friend.

With Great Expectations,

Charley

HAVE AN IDEA FOR A STORY? Contact Forrest White at fwhite@firstumc.org

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PHOTO BY FORREST WHITE

From the Editor

Forrest White Director of Mission Ministries

Cruising Through Bee Stings and Dog Bites There was one place in my small hometown where I desperately wanted to work part-time as a teenager, the coolest place – Music City Records.

I loved going there to look at vinyl record albums, 45s and – after Sony unveiled the Walkman – cassette tapes.

If you heard Casey Kasem introduce a hot song on American Top 40 or saw a band lip sync a hit on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and just had to have it, there was no place to go other than Music City unless, of course, it was the mailbox, which meant you went a little crazy and joined the Columbia House Music Club and got 12 records or tapes for a dollar by agreeing to purchase additional ones at “regular club prices.”

(I may still be paying for some.)

I never got an interview at Music City Records. It seems the owner and staff deemed me not cool enough.

So, with that dream shattered, my summer job hunts took me elsewhere.

I asked staff members at First UMC to tell me about summer jobs of their teen years – the most fun or the hardest or the craziest. Here are mine ...

Most fun – When a local car dealership had a customer that wanted a specific car (make, model, color, etc.) and they didn’t have it, they sent me to another dealership that had the car.

Driving a new car for hours. Listening to music as loud as you wanted. The only thing that could have made it better? A girlfriend to ride along with me, but, apparently, I wasn’t cool enough for that either. I am not even sure they paid me. If they did, the joke was on them. I would have done it for free.

Hardest – Cutting grass. Just the worst. Of course, my memory might be stuck in that two-week window when I had mono and didn’t know it. Yes, I kept mowing lawns in the summer heat while pushing through the absolute brutality

of mono. I think I need to take a sick day now just from thinking about it.

Also, there was the time I ran over an underground yellow jacket nest. This upset all of them especially the ones dumb enough to attack me instead of the actual lawnmower, which was the real villain.

One of my favorite parts of living now in the Deluxe (not really) Apartment in the Sky (4th floor) in downtown Tampa is I have zero lawn care responsibilities. We don’t even have a lawn. What could be better?

Craziest – During the summer after I graduated from high school, I walked door to door updating the city directory. Got bitten by two dogs and somehow didn’t quit. If injury attorneys with large billboards had been around back then, I’d be set and possibly living in an actual deluxe apartment in the sky. I don’t remember any warnings about dog bites in the job interview. I’m not sure there was an interview. I feel like they hired anyone desperate enough to walk through the door.

Each morning you’d get a printout of addresses and information about residents. The company randomly inserted fake information to make sure you were checking.

If you caught the bogus info you got a bonus.

But the bogus info made for awkward encounters. It makes a longtime home resident as mad as an underground yellow jacket in a lawnmower attack when you ask if he’s (insert company generated fake name here).

Fortunately I’ve always had pretty good people skills, even as a teen, apparently just not good enough to work at Music City Records or have a shotgun-riding girlfriend. So, I respectfully defused the bogus info situations quickly.

The best part of that job? You could opt to work from home and call residents to check their info. That meant watching MTV and raiding the refrigerator while getting paid.

The City Directory Company (not its real name) may well have invented working remotely.

My friend Blair and I took turns making calls while staying glued to the music videos. It was the summer of ’83, two years after MTV debuted.

Video may have killed the radio star, but you know what?

It never bit me like those dogs did.

All the best,

Forrest 3 3

The Calling CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Berlin: I guess that’s what I’m saying.

Fishwick: Well, I don’t waste my time on people like you, so get out of here. You’ll be fine in my class. You’ll do well on the paper. But go.

Berlin: What do you mean?

Fishwick: I mean … I … don’t … waste … my … time … on … people … like … you. People who are going to do something they don’t like for the rest of their life for money.

Don’t you realize there’s so much more in this life than money?

Berlin: Silence Fishwick: Didn’t you tell me you’re a Christian?

Berlin: Yeah.

Fishwick: Have you ever actually read the gospels?

You know Jesus isn’t for what you’re doing.

Berlin: You don’t have to be harsh.

Fishwick: I spend time in Bangladesh. I’ve literally held dying children in my arms. I do that in the summers. I work at Virginia Tech to pay my bills.

The professor grilled Berlin, guessing correctly that his parents were covering the cost of his education. Berlin interrupted to say he was working in the summers …

Fishwick: But are you going into debt?

Berlin: No. Fishwick: So you’ve got a full ride to Virginia Tech?

Berlin: Silence Fishwick: Do you have any idea what percentage of the world’s population gets a free education by accident of birth? I know your parents pay taxes. But for you it’s free.

Berlin: Silence Fishwick: So, with all the things you’ve been given, the big idea you’ve got is, ‘I want to get more’ and the way you’re going to get more is working a job you actually don’t like. If you had said you liked accounting I would have said, ‘Fantastic, accountants can do a lot of good things in this world!’ But what you said is, ‘I don’t like it.’

So I am not wasting my time on you.

Berlin left and began the walk to his dorm room, his head swimming. How can he still remember the walk so vividly? Then again how could he forget? His life had just been changed forever. “I thought about what was said in that meeting until I fell asleep,” Berlin said.

The next day he returned to Fishwick’s office.

Berlin: I need to talk to you about what you said.

Fishwick: (looking directly at him) You’re lost.

Berlin: I wasn’t until yesterday. I had a plan.

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Fishwick: (smiling) It wasn’t much of a plan.

But God had a plan, too. And quite a plan it turned out to be.

Looking back as Bishop of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church, Berlin sees prevenient grace – God at work before we know it – inexorably woven into his childhood days on through college.

He wouldn’t have met Fishwick if a neighbor and friend from Winchester, Va. – “more like the sister I never had” – hadn’t urged him to take the elective with her.

“I was 19 but probably more like 17 in maturity,” said Berlin, the youngest of three brothers. “(Fishwick) called me to do adult work of integrating your faith with your decision making. Of course I had read what Jesus said over and over in bible study, youth group and church.

But he was asking me to do a different thing. He was asking me to apply it to my life.”

While a stranger delivered the jolting challenge to deeply consider through Christian eyes the road he was traveling, Berlin’s father J.D. sent him a letter at Virginia Tech encouraging him to rethink his future plans. Berlin remembers the letter reading in part: It may be you’re pursuing (the accounting major) because of me,and you don’t need to do that. It has never occurred to me that you’d be a CPA because CPAs have to sit for long periods of time in an enclosed room and do math and there has never been a day in your life you liked to do that. I think you need to be in a job working with lots of people …

Initially, Berlin thought of shifting his major to social work, but his parents urged him to opt for an undergraduate degree that would empower him to manage people and then, perhaps, pursue a master’s in social work.

“If I become a pastor, will I make enough?

Will I be enough?”

His father didn’t stop there, telling him, “You have to interview three people I choose and one person you choose all in a related field.

You don’t know what these people actually do.”

J.D. Berlin chose the director of a home for children who had struggled in the foster care system, a department chair in social work at Virginia Tech and Rev. David Hampton, associate pastor at their church, Braddock Street United Methodist in Winchester. Berlin chose a social worker in Blacksburg, Va.

Bishop Tom Berlin

“The pastor said to me, ‘I’ve always thought you’d be doing what I do. I think you ought to be a pastor and here’s why.’

Nobody had ever said that to me.”

While they may not have said it, others had thought it. “I said, ‘Dad, why did you send me to the pastor?” Berlin said. “He said, ‘I’ve always wondered if that’s what you should be doing.’” His mother, Nancy, agreed.

Ultimately, a compromise came regarding his college major. After researching the path to becoming a social worker, Berlin heeded his father’s advice and earned his degree in public administration.

But the seeds of becoming a pastor had been planted long before Berlin graduated from Handley High School.

There were giants of his faith inside the walls of Braddock Street UMC. Five students from the church who graduated from high school in the early 1980s eventually became ordained ministers. It was a congregation filled with community leaders and faithful disciples, modeling their faith through service and pouring into young people.

There were Sunday school teachers who helped him tangibly understand the book of James and the author’s warning that faith without works is dead (James 2:26) and who patiently answered young teens’ “sometimes ridiculous” questions.

At his high school, there was the Fellowship of Christian Athletes leader who spoke often of setting and maintaining boundaries and “living like a Christian if you call yourself one.”

Even with the strong faith foundation, even with trusted voices whispering that he should be a pastor, even with his own thoughts at times whispering the same, it took a leaky roof in rural Tennessee and reassurance from one more faithful voice for him to finally surrender to his calling.

In the summer of 1983, Berlin went with Braddock Street UMC’s high school students for a weeklong mission trip with Mountain T.O.P. (Tennessee Outreach Project), a Christian ministry which has been working to decrease substandard housing since 1975.

“I really loved working with the students,” he said. “I also loved the kind of adults who show up for those teams.

With a few exceptions, they tend to be low-maintenance adults, people who are mission oriented and very committed. I loved the clients. We were building outhouses and repairing homes.”

He loved that week with his church team so much he committed to spend the summer of 1984 serving on staff with Mountain T.O.P. in Ozone, Tenn., about 60 miles west of Knoxville.

One week that summer, he led a group of students charged with putting a new front porch on a home but went inside first to meet the elderly couple. On the way out he asked, “Why do you have buckets on the floor?”

The man said, “For the water.” Some people in the area were still using pump wells to bring water into their homes, so Berlin asked about their well. “We have water CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

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Bishop Tom Berlin CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

on tap.” He asked again about the buckets.

“For the rain, boy, for the rain!” the man said.

“When it rains, the roof leaks.”

The couple had been told by Mountain T.O.P. that there wasn’t enough money for a new roof.

Berlin went back to camp and urged the director to find funding. He went with her to tell a local United Methodist Women’s group about the leaky roof and they donated the money for a new one. “By the end of the week, those people had a sound roof over their heads,” Berlin said.

As he drifted off to sleep on a rainy night, he thought about the couple who didn’t need buckets on their floors for the first time in months, about the students and adult leaders who put on the roof. He thought about the UMW group that gave the money, about how a great need had been cared for by the Church.

“I thought ‘I could do this for the rest of my life. I could do this every day.’ I loved seeing the Church actually being the Church.”

As camp wound down and with senior year looming, Berlin was still anxious. He shared two lingering questions with a trusted adult at the camp … “If I become a pastor, will I make enough? Will I be enough?”

She gave him more than reassurance. At the end of the week, she gave him a wooden cross with scripture from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount imploring followers not to worry about tomorrow, but rather to trust God’s provision.

That cross hung from the rearview mirror in his car for at least 10 years.

During worship each week, Mountain T.O.P. had fish hooks spread across the altar rail and speakers who urged going from the mountain to the valley below as fishers of men. It was a call to continue living a servant’s life. The hook was the reminder.

Months after walking into Fishwick’s office for the first time, Berlin walked up to the altar, took a hook and prayed a deal with God. He would go to seminary. He would give God three years to completely convince him to become a pastor.

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“If I wasn’t completely convinced by then, the deal was I would go do something else and be a very well-educated Sunday school teacher.”

Even before graduating from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, he was convinced.

The Rev. Dr. John Peters has served in the Virginia Conference of the UMC for more than 50 years. He has been a friend and mentor to Berlin since the late 1980s.

He will tell you about Berlin’s career from his first appointment out of seminary at a two-point charge to his 25 years as senior pastor at Floris UMC, which under his leadership became the flagship church of the conference. He will tell you about the vital leadership role Berlin played both in Virginia and across the denomination in the best of times and in the worst of times amid recent turmoil.

But Peters had heard about Berlin long before they met.

Berlin served as an assistant pastor at Duluth (Ga.) UMC while at Candler. Peters had a family connection at the church.

“They were saying, ‘This guy (Berlin) is special,’” Peters recalled. “They were right. He’s a dynamo and has been from the very beginning.”

Fishwick cut a deal of his own for that communications class, not with God but with Berlin. He turned it into an independent study for the student who was “lost” and gave him a list of books to read.

“He said, ‘You don’t need a class. You need to find your life,’” Berlin said.

Just before Christmas that year, his parents received a letter from Fishwick.

“It has been a privilege to have your son in my class this semester,” the Professor wrote.

In the margins he had drawn a picture. It was a wagon, with a sky full of stars and a small rope, a reference to the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, “Hitch your wagon to a star.”

“This is what I think of,” Fishwick wrote, “when I think of your son.”

Trish Warren

By Forrest White

Calm in the Storm During a recent weekly staff meeting, Jill Hockin asked an unusual question of her colleagues serving with Hurricane Ian recovery in Charlotte County.

How would you describe our boss?

Their answers might make you want to apply for a job.

“Strong leader.” “Trustworthy.” “A great listener.” “Supportive.” “A positive role model and mentor.” “Devoted to the job.” “Compassionate.” “Will go the extra mile.”

“Calming personality.”

They were describing First UMC member Trish Warren, who has served as Disaster Response Coordinator for the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church since December 2020.

Above all else, one thing keeps her going through the grueling weeks after a storm hits and in the midst of the never-ending struggle to secure funding and volunteers to help as many survivors as possible.

“For me, it’s just holding people’s hands through their most difficult times,” Warren said.

If predictions for the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season (June 1-Nov 30) hold true, the Conference may need Warren’s calming presence more than ever in the coming months.

In late May the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) released a foreboding forecast for the 2024 season, calling for 17-25 named storms with 8-13 becoming hurricanes (sustained winds of at least 74 miles per hour) and 4-7 reaching “major” status (winds of at least 111 mph).

The latest prediction surpassed the NOAA’s previous forecast high of 14-23 named storms in 2010. How did forecasters do that year?

There were 19 named storms in 2010.

The NOAA cited these factors when releasing the 2024 prediction: CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

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First UMC Staff

What We Did That Summer Nicki Taylor ASSOCIATE PASTOR My favorite summer job as a teen was working at WKDZ Radio in Cadiz, Ky., as their agriculture and news radio intern at age 18. I still remember what it felt like to have my alarm go off at 3 a.m. so I could get up, have my Forrest coffee and breakfast, get dressed and make it to the radio station for myby 4:45 a.m. White call time. The world was peaceful and quiet. There were rarely any other cars out on the road. Once I got to the radio station, we got in the booth and got all the equipment fired up. It was magic. We had all sorts of “interesting guests”– some were people trying to make it big in Nashville. Once we had alien enthusiasts come and swear up and down that the “Little Kelly Green Men” legend – supposedly aliens who visited the little town of Kelly, Ky. – was real and they had proof! I loved this job because of the people, because of the variety and because of the responsibility and trust they placed in me, even at such a young age.

It helped form me into who I am today!

Diana Russell DIRECTOR OF INVITE MINISTRIES

“Summer-

My summer job as a teen was working on the time is the family egg farm. My job consisted of gathering eggs, feeding the birds and checking the cages best of what for the over 65,000 chickens! I did not have might be.” to shovel the manure…that was left for my - Charles Bowden brothers. There was never a day off because the chickens always needed to be fed and cared for.

They don’t stop laying eggs! Even though there were other farm hands, this was a family affair. The only time I was allowed to take off from work was for homework or church activities. Therefore I signed up for everything that was going on at church! It started out to be a way to get out of work and later became my passion to serve where needed. I thank my grandparents and parents every day for teaching me how to work hard, care for God’s creatures and take responsibility serious.

Cristi Moore DIRECTOR OF CHILDREN’S MINISTRIES

Working at the tennis pro shop at Inverrary Country Club in Ft. Lauderdale was hands down the coolest summer job I had as a teenager. Not only did I have the privilege of playing tennis for free on the top-notch clay courts (my favorite sport at the time) but I also had the opportunity to mingle with a few “famous” personalities. One memorable incident was being asked out by Jackie Gleason’s stepson, which was short-lived once he discovered my age. The whole experience felt incredibly glamorous for a star-struck 17-year-old.

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Andy Whitaker-Smith ASSOCIATE PASTOR

I had a summer job in college that lasted until graduation – working as a stagehand for our college theater.

The job consisted of rigging set props, hanging spotlights, going up in rafters, being backstage for shows like Cats, Blue Man Group, Rent, Willie Nelson and Cinderella on Ice (we had to stay up all night watering and freezing the stage for that one). The craziest thing that happened during one of those shows was the rigging captain telling the workers up high to remove the counterweight to whatever set piece was hanging. He didn’t know that a giant set piece had been removed from a rig, so he didn’t tell the workers to take the weight off.

This sent the weight crashing down and hanging pole flying up, setting off sprinklers!

Summer Jobs

MATTHEW CORL

Warren Pattison

CO-DIRECTOR OF MUSIC AND FINE ARTS

DIRECTOR OF ADULT MINISTRIES

As soon as I had my license, I began filling in for organists that were on vacation. The churches were small with old pipe and electric organs. The smallest was St James Episcopal in Mt Airy, Md. Their organist worked with my dad at the board of education office. My dad had told him that I played the organ, so he asked if I could sub for him. I had never been to an Episcopal service, so my dad and I went to the church the Sunday before I would play. It wasn’t too complicated and the organist showed me what to listen for and what to play when.

It was, however, this priest’s last Sunday. The next Sunday I drove to the church and arrived in plenty of time. I was a little nervous, but I was ready to go. After the hymn, the liturgy began and I was all set to play the first response, the Kyrie. However, the new priest didn’t let me play! He just kept right on talking!

Maybe I wasn’t fast enough. Maybe I waited too long to begin. I was not going to let this “Winter is copper happen with the Gloria! As soon as the Kyrie Autumn is bronze was finished, I went right into the Gloria – I was not going to let that priest get a word Spring is silver in edgewise! And since that moment, I begin Summer is gold.” playing the second the pastor is finished – I - Matshona Dhliwayo won’t let that ever happen again!

My first job was as a host/greeter at El Chico Tex-Mex restaurant in the Brazos Mall in Lake Jackson, Texas. I started there because I was attracted to one of the servers, who ended up becoming my high school sweetheart. I learned to greet the guests as human beings, made in the image of God. I don’t know that I recognized it in those terms, but as one of the more popular restaurants in town, the clientele was quite diverse. Sometimes people came in after a long day working in the chemical plants. Others came in three-piece suits. And there was no shortage of fellow mall employees on their meal breaks.

Nicole Wood EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

I worked my first paid job (outside of babysitting) from ages 13-15, as an assistant to my dance instructor. This job was a delight. Joy and laughter was guaranteed as I helped the kids learn their dance routines. Anyone who has tried to teach 3 and 4-year-olds to line up and follow choreographed dance moves knows this is a hilarious adventure, especially when they haven’t yet mastered differentiating left from right! I earned $5 per hour (at a time when minimum wage was only $3.05). I was able to take my own dance lessons for free, which made my parents really happy!

Emily Felgenhauer DIRECTOR OF YOUTH MINISTRIES My very first job was when I was 14 years old and was on the custodial staff of my church, Friendship United Methodist Church in Bolingbrook, Ill. I would vacuum, mop, clean toilets, wipe down counters, clean the church kitchen, wipe down the nursery toys, spray fragrant smells in all the rooms and straighten the chairs in the sanctuary. I was so happy to work for my church and felt such satisfaction cleaning and knowing I was a part of the congregation’s love and respect for the church. I often would go in on Saturday mornings, stay Sunday nights after youth group and again Wednesday nights after choir practice. I can’t remember what I was paid nor did it really matter. I really had so much joy being a part of my church staff. I guess that love for working for the United Methodist Church has stuck even 25 years later.

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Trish Warren CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7

• Extremely warm water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea • One of the strongest El Niño climate patterns ever in the Pacific Ocean ending in early summer with an anticipated quick transition to a La Niña pattern • Reduced wind shear in the tropics because of La Niña

Many still believe you need to be skilled in carpentry to make a difference on a work team despite the underlying principle of disaster response – to provide a caring, Christian presence to survivors – or to borrow Warren’s guiding image – to hold the hands of the hurting, both figuratively and literally.

Her first taste of disaster recovery work came in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, which roared ashore in Southwest Florida in the fall of 2017 and raced up the center of the state, still packing winds of around 100 mph when it reached Polk County.

Amid the uncertainty of what may come Florida’s way, Warren has an added stressor. Primarily because of diminished grant funding available through the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), the Conference plans to cut its disaster response team by two-thirds this August. The cuts will impact both field and Conference level staff.

Months after the storm Warren found herself installing flooring alongside her husband Keith on a First UMC work team.

That means the wait for help will be longer – Ian hit in September 2022 – and, for many, may never come at all. More than 1,000 households waiting for help across Charlotte, Lee and Sarasota counties will be without case managers after the job cuts. It could take 5-10 years to get some survivors back to where they were before the storm, Warren said.

Having taken a year off from her job as a regional manager with Pittsburgh Plate Glass to help care for her ailing father, Warren applied for a case management job with the FLUMC’s Irma recovery and took it. From there she served in two more disaster recovery roles before ascending to the top job at the end of 2020.

“By then another disaster likely will have come,” she said.

Funding to help survivors comes primarily through the UMCOR grants but also through donations to the FLUMC disaster fund. Survivors who receive help must show need through multiple documentations and are either uninsured or underinsured.

“Disaster recovery is our mutual opportunity to meet people who have been impacted and offer them the love and light of Christ,” said the Rev. Alex Shanks, FLUMC’s Assistant to the Bishop, who also serves as Warren’s boss.

“We cannot do this alone. We need every church in our conference to participate.”

Simply put, that isn’t happening.

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There have been more Presbyterian teams on the ground helping with Ian recovery in Florida than United Methodist teams, Warren said.

“I had no clue how to do anything,” she said, with a laugh. “We didn’t have a construction person there to guide us. We just figured it out. If I can do it, you can do it. Plus, you’ve always got YouTube.”

When the work weeks are long and the nights short, when she’s feeling exhausted in every way and needs a reminder of why she does what she does, Warren remembers moments like this one …

A youth ministry team from another state came to Polk County to help with Irma recovery. They worked on an elderly couple’s home during the day.

“The gentleman had been diagnosed with cancer and he did not believe in God,” Warren said. “The youth team prayed every morning before working on his house. One morning he walked outside and prayed with them. That was the day he accepted Jesus.”

Calm in the Storm

By the time repairs were complete and the Conference held its home dedication the man was in hospice care there. Two days later he passed away.

“Even though it was a time of grief for everyone it was also a time of hope,” Warren said. “We knew he was with Jesus. Those are the moments that make me want to continue doing what I do.”

With the hurricane season upon us, Warren urges everyone to have a specific plan for what to do if a storm approaches. Because storms hit Florida from almost every direction and often cross the state, Polk County isn’t likely to escape the effects of a busy storm season.

“People think, ‘It’s not going to happen to me,’” Warren said. “Then it does. If you’re not ready it can mean the difference between life and death.”

In addition to asking everyone to prepare, she asks for prayers for all those serving in disaster response and for those living in the path of storms. Then, after a storm hits, she urges everyone to find a way to serve survivors whose lives are changed forever by the raging storm surge and the relentless winds.

Shanks calls Warren “a gift to the Florida Conference.”

“Her tireless efforts,” he said, “are used by God to restore hope.”

Please make donations directly to the Florida Conference Disaster Relief Fund. Email Forrest White (fwhite@firstumc.org) for the link.

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Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage

PAID

Lakeland, FL Permit No. 30

72 Lakeland Morton Drive Lakeland, FL 33803 Church office 863-686-3163 firstumc.org

Just a few ... OF THE CONTINUING WAYS TO SERVE AT FIRST UMC: Philip O’Brien Elementary - student mentoring and teacher support August through May Dream Center - Kids’ Club Sunday Food Collection - first Sunday of each month ROAR Florida - Tuesday mornings at 10am for games and fellowship VISTE - needs volunteers to help serve the elderly Lake Parker cleanup - quarterly Tuesday Tigers - ramps and home repair

WORSHIP SERVICES

Please reach out to ministry area leaders for details.

Just a few ... OF THE UPCOMING EVENTS AT FIRST UMC: 8:15 am SANCTUARY The best of traditional worship is presented with a fresh approach to time-honored hymns with a variety of music.

9:30 FELLOWSHIP CENTER A contemporary, relaxed atmosphere with the worship music of today.

ASL interpreter in person.

11:00 SANCTUARY Traditional hymns with organ accompaniment are featured along with various fine arts music groups.

Beat the Heat, 6:30 - 9:00pm

July 3

SIFAT Mission Trip High School Mission Trip to Branches in Miami Youth Family Fall Kick-Off

June 23 – 28 July 21 – 27 August 11

Camp Neighborhood

Starts June 17

Family FunDay Sundays, 2:30 - 4:20pm - Barnett Park Splash Pad - Lakeland Ice Cream Company - First UMC Playground

June 23 July 21 August 25

Hurricane Ian Recovery Teams

September 12-14 October 10-12 November 14-16

Summer Suppers

June 5, June 19

11:00 FELLOWSHIP CENTER The Current is a unique, contemporary worship experience. Communion is offered each Sunday.

July 17, August 14, July 28 JOY (55+ ministry) - Lakeland Community Theatre - Planning team meeting - Senior adult gathering

July 21 August 13 August 23

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