Pleasant Grove Assoc. prepares students for upcoming school year

August can be a stressful time for students and parents alike. Students dread the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year. Parents worry about getting their students prepared for school with clothes, lunches, pencils, paper and all the other many things students and teachers need.

A team in Pleasant Grove tries to alleviate those back-to-school stresses. For the past 10 years, the Pleasant Grove Baptist Association Christian Ministries Center (CMC) has held a school supplies giveaway for the community.

“Our communities have many folks with needs,” said Pleasant Grove Association director of missions Dan Wiggins. “We have many single parents and grandparents raising children in our area, and we thought they could use some help.”

Pleasant Grove partnered with the associational Woman’s Missionary Union group to launch the first giveaway, and over the years since, the rest of the association wanted to get involved.

“The last two years our CMC has sponsored (the school supply giveaway) with our churches’ support,” Wiggins said.

Each summer before school kicks off, Pleasant Grove has a special week to serve its regular CMC clients. The association also supplies its churches with the giveaway bags so they can provide for those in their congregation and in their community. Then the CMC opens up on a Saturday and they give away school supplies to anyone who comes by and asks.

The association supplies students with many basic school supplies including paper, notebooks, pens, pencils, rulers and scissors. They also give away Bibles.

“One of the ways that it has affected the communities we serve is that other churches and more agencies are doing the same thing in our area,” Wiggins said. “That benefits more children for the better. Some parents have come to know Christ as a result of our actions.”

It’s a team effort to organize and execute a ministry as large as this one, and Wiggins said the association and churches are up to the task.

“We are proud of our churches responding to our communities and children. We always have sufficient volunteer help to pack and give away the bags,” he said. “In fact, this year we had to turn some volunteers away because of the tight quarters we were packing in. … Every year we have enough supplies to help our children get started to school.”