United Methodist Student Day Offering – November 27, 2011

Every year United Methodists receive a Student Day Offering to assist with higher education scholarships for our young people.  These funds are needed more than ever this year as many students are finding it hard to find money to attend college in these challenging times.  When you give to the Student Day offering you are supporting students who are finding new ways to serve God in the world.  You are touching the future with every dollar you give.

                

Morgan Prettyman is a 2011 graduate of the University of Delaware.   She was active in the Wesley Foundation as an undergrad and now is taking part in the Graduate Student group.  She is a gifted poet.  For the dedication to the Wesley Foundation she wrote the following poem:

I’ve heard this (Wesley Foundation) described in many ways;

A home away from home

A place to be when things go wrong

A place of love, laughter, and forgiveness

People who play hard, pray hard, work hard

A group of talent, of the future

A family

A family is the circle around these many words

It is the hands holding hands in the midst of prayer

It is the familiar faces, the strong smiles

It is the embrace when tears are falling

It is comfort and words of encouragement,

It is the eyes that see more in friends than the friends

Can see in themselves

It is the challenging conversations and the open ears

To hear all sides

It is a crowded home overflowing

From forgiveness and joy

It is a growing circle that loves to be stretched beyond

Its boundaries, loves to be too big for its walls

This circle sings and laughs and cries and struggles and triumphs

And, above all, lives in communion, in this wide open

Ring of linked hands and hopes and friendships

That always finds a way to lift up

I’ve heard this described in many ways: because family is a living word.

Please support promising young people like Morgan as you receive an offering this Sunday.  The future is bright for the United Methodist Church.  Thanks to Morgan for sharing her poetry and for the youth and campus chaplain at the University of Delaware: Rev. Mary Haggard.