Backpacks, Backpacks, and More Backpacks! for our next MissionSunday - July 30, 2023

Our Mission Committee is once again partnering with Live Love St Pete, a non-profit founded by FPC member Melody Proud. Her organization works with local schools to provide much-needed resources to underserved elementary school children in St. Petersburg. For this month’s Fifth Sunday MissionSunday, we will be helping to fill hundreds of backpacks with school supplies, which will be distributed to underprivileged kids the first week of August at the Trop.

This upcoming MissionSunday will be on July 30 in Fellowship Hall. The time available to help will be from 8 AM - 1 PM. If you attend the 9 o’clock Connect service or the 11 o’clock Sanctuary service, you may help either before or after your service. Melody and other Mission Committee members will be there to assist.

The work will be easy-peasy. (Do kids still say this?) The backpacks and school supplies have already been purchased through Live Love St Pete's on-going fundraising efforts. So all we need to do is fill them!

Note: if you would like to sponsor a backpack (or more than one!), the cost is $15 per backpack, and includes all the school supplies we'll be packing in them! You can donate online at LiveLoveStPete’s website (HERE), or you can give a check to the church with "backpacks" in the memo line.

“Our goal is to fill 400 backpacks on MissionSunday,” says Melody. “I know that may be aggressive, but it should be easy if we get enough hands to help.” She and friends will be filling the other 600 backpacks another time.

And who gets these 1,000 backpacks filled with school supplies? And how will they be distributed? “They will be given to schoolkids K-5 in need of a backpack,” Melody says. “And we’ll distribute these at the Saturday Morning Shoppe at The Trop’s parking lot until they’re all gone.”