From assembling birthing kits to servicing cars to collecting donations for local food pantries — Blount countians were out in force Saturday as part of Operation Inasmuch — and what a success it was.
MARK A. LARGE | THE DAILY TIMES (From left to right) Ann Wilson, Quinn Black, Kim Newman and Sydney Beshore assemble birthing kits for women in Haiti during Operation Inasmuch at First Baptist Church in Maryville. More than 500 people representing several churches in Blount County participated in the work-day event.
Operation Inasmuch is global campaign of volunteers who go out into their communities to serve the needs of others. Several churches and Maryville Christian School students came together for the first one here. The sites included First Baptist Maryville, homes that needed cleanup and repair, Trinity Dental Clinic, Rockford Elementary School, Chilhowee Baptist Center, Advanced Auto Care, Parkside, Heaven Sent Home and Second Harvest.
Banding together
“Of those five projects, we completed three of them but wanted to keep going on the other two,” Wyatt said. The completed projects included putting together 250 birthing kits for women in Haiti, making 125 friendship bags for women on the streets of Atlanta and creating centerpieces for The Welcome Table ministry at New Providence Presbyterian Church.
The two ongoing projects are putting together scrapbooks for children in foster care and making lap quilts and bags for residents of local nursing homes.
There was also a group at First Baptist that wrote letters to military personnel stationed overseas, many of them children and teenagers.
A beautiful day
Lucas said the weather cooperated wonderfully on Saturday. All of the projects were initiated, she said, and only one was delayed by an afternoon shower.
This whole project was actually an offshoot of a project that was instigated last year here in Blount County by the Blount Global Women, Wyatt said. “Once (Lucas) got connected up with Operation Inasmuch it just got even bigger,” she said.
Fairview United Methodist, St. Paul AME Zion, New Providence Presbyterian, Forest Hill Baptist, Our Lady of Fatima and lots of others joined in. Lucas purposefully paired up members from different churches on the same work team.
“We wanted to make it truly a community event,” she explained, “not just one church doing something on one site.”
There are 562 volunteers who were probably sore from the manual labor, tired from such a long day, but also grateful for the opportunity. Lucas said she heard over and over again from the volunteers how they were the ones being truly blessed.
Plans are to make this an annual event. Gathering teams, work site locations, tools, etc., takes months, but both Lucas and Wyatt know it’s worth every bit of effort it takes.
“It will be exciting to see what God blesses us with next year,” Lucas said
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