When Wes Lamon, Royal Ambassador (RA) leader at Northside Baptist Church, Jasper, was looking for a missions activity for his first through fifth grade RA boys, he decided to think beyond activities they had done in the past.
“We’d been trying to come up with something different and there’s a Woman’s Missionary Union leader at our church who’s very missions-minded, so I started bouncing ideas off of her,” Lamon said. “She suggested calling the state disaster relief agency, and since (our church’s Sunday to collect the) Disaster Relief offering was coming up, I thought it seemed like a good fit.”
Plus, he said, the organization’s logo was a hard hat, so he thought that might make the boys more interested.
Thanks to a suggestion by Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers, the boys decided they’d raise money to purchase bears that could be given to children following a disaster situation.
“We knew the bears would be used throughout the state and that they’d go wherever disaster is,” Lamon said. “Sometimes I have to remind our boys how blessed they are because a lot of them haven’t had any disaster in their lives. I tried to remind them of the tornadoes we had a few years ago and asked them to think about how sad and scared they’d be if their house was just gone and they were left with nothing. They got excited about the bears, to help show someone else in that situation love.”
On Feb. 8, Northside Baptist’s Disaster Relief Sunday, the RAs sold paper hearts at the church for $3 each, encouraging the congregation to write messages on each heart to be distributed along with a bear. Many wrote their favorite Bible verses. Several RAs helped lead a special offering, standing at the doors wearing hard hats and collecting money as church members left the service.
In total, the RAs raised $162 — enough to purchase 35 disaster bears.
Kasey Wiginton’s fifth-grade son, Will, is an RA at Northside and took part in the event. Wiginton said she loved watching her son get so excited to be a part of the outreach.
“He thought it was really cool, and he even turned in money for a bear himself,” she said. “He gave me a flyer explaining the project and was really excited to be a part of the fundraiser.”
Simple project
Wiginton said she and other RA parents were thrilled with this project, since it was such a simple way for the boys to make a huge difference.
Shawn Stinson, Northside’s minister of music and outreach, has two boys in RAs as well. His 8-year-old son, Gavin, was especially proud to be a part of the disaster bears fundraiser.
“He thought providing the bears was a good way to encourage kids in tough situations,” Stinson said. “He was excited about being able to take up the money on Disaster Relief Sunday. Any time the kids are able to do jobs that are normally done by adults, they like it. In this case, they were like ushers in the foyer taking up the special offering after the service.”
In his first year as RA director at Northside, Lamon said coming up with missions activities that will really resonate with the boys can be challenging.
“When you’re dealing with such young boys it’s hard to plan something really big, but these little things matter too,” he said. “It’s the start of something in their mind that they want to do things for other people.”
For the next project Lamon plans to set up bins around the church and encourage members to bring empty cans from home that the RA boys can recycle, using the money to make a quarterly donation to a missions fund.
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