As we’ve seen with the recent tornadoes, when disaster strikes, United Methodists respond. In 2013, floods throughout Illinois resulted in families needing immediate help. Emergency cleaning buckets were one of the first ways we showed Christ’s care. The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) distributed 2,700 flood buckets in our area through partner organizations to those flood victims faced with the overwhelming job of cleaning up from the devastation. When the waters were muddied, cleaning buckets brought relief. Each year at the NIC Annual Conference the NIC Board of Global Ministries and the Annual Conference Committee issues a mission challenge for local churches to bring items that go towards relief efforts through UMCOR or its partners like Church World Service. This year’s collection is for Church World Service Emergency Cleanup Buckets. CUMC is working at assembling and supplying 3 complete Emergency Cleaning Buckets. There are specific items that go into each bucket, so if you’d like to participate in this important effort to help when disaster strikes, please see the sign-up sheet in the narthex for items that are still needed for each of the buckets. (Sunday, June 7th is the last day to bring in the items; Pastor Lee, Peggy Literski and Kim Aupperle will make sure that our 3 buckets are taken with them when they go to the Annual Conference)