GO! Ministry

Why we do what we do:

To reflect the love of God through acts of service

Our Vision:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works,so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do

Ephesians 2:8-10 (NIV)

Opportunities to Offer Grace

Care Bags for Kids

These backpacks are filled with age appropriate items for children who have just been placed into foster/kinship care. Many times, these children have not had time to gather the items that they may need or want. They are scared and may not know where they are going or what is going to happen to them. The purpose of these bags is to provide not only basic personal care items, but also to provide comforting items such as toys and a stuffed animal. The hope is that they will have something that will bring them even the tiniest bit of comfort during this difficult time.

If you would like to provide a care bag to a child or children, you can pick an age and corresponding list below, fill a backpack with the items from the list and return the backpack to church on Sunday or to the office during office hours which are M-TH 8-4PM

Our current goal is to fill 50 Bags if you still have one please bring in back as soon as possible!!! To get a list click on one of the following ages:

Girl	Boy
1-3	1-3
4-8	4-8
9-13	9-13
14-18	14-18

Family Promise of Pueblo

In the upcoming months, The Oasis will be partnering with Family Promise of Pueblo. For those of you who may not be familiar with this program, it is set up to help families who are homeless. Currently there are no shelters in this area that allow for entire families. This means that some families who are facing homelessness end up being separated due to age or gender restrictions at the local shelters. This program will allow for the entire family to stay together during this time, as well as provide the family with tools to get them back on their feet. This program is active nationwide and hopes to be up and running for the Pueblo area in the near future.

How this works is once every quarter, The Oasis will have a week where we, as volunteers, go the the host building and spend the evening cooking for the families, helping kids with their homework, playing with them, and/or just visiting with the parents.

This is going to be a great opportunity to show hurting people the love of Christ. I would like to invite everyone who might be interested in volunteering for this to be on the lookout for the next informational meeting/training. The training is not a requirement for volunteers, but if anyone would like to be more informed about the program, learn about some good ways to interact with the families, or learn some things maybe not to do, this would be a great place to start. The training is free and they even provide yummy homemade goodies to snack on!!

If you have any questions about this program you can check out their website, http://familypromise.org/ihn-how-it-works or you can email the church at theoasischristianchurch@q.com

Celebrations of Grace

· The Oasis was able to send a gift of over $3,000 to the Madeira Islands after the mudslides there.

· The Oasis helped provide volunteers for a summer camp for foster families and for a banquet for foster parents.

· The Oasis worked with the Pueblo West community to raise $1,777 dollars for clean drinking water through World Vision.

· The Oasis helped send Richard Petrosino on a short term missions trip to Bolivia to work in an orphanage and he went back and took 7 more Oasis people with him in July 2011

· The Oasis provided a bunch of infant clothes, toys, a gift card and meals for family in the DSS system that had recently taken in a 2 month old with Downs Syndrome and several other medical conditions.

· The Oasis has done an annual New Coat Drive for Pueblo West school kids for 5 years now and this year raised $1,104.23 and received 26 new coats in Oct 2011

· The Oasis had provided 2 awesome meals now for families attending a parenting workshop per request from one of the schools in our local school district.

· The Oasis provides Care Bags for Kids to our local DSS on a continual basis, recently there were 12 bags given out by DSS over one weekend - one family had 7 kids and another had 5.

· The Oasis had several individuals go caroling and help residents with crafts at the Legacy right before Christmas! Lots of smiles!!