You can be a part of something BIG this summer by volunteering with Jesse’s House at the United Methodist Children’s Home!

Jesse’s House is a safe, holistic summer and after-school program through which elementary and middle school children, youth and their families connect with the wholeness of God’s love, churches engage in ministry and young adults grow as leaders.

This summer, from June 4 through July 27, Jesse’s House will serve nearly 120 children and youth at three Jesse’s House locations:

• the Children’s Home campus (Decatur)
• North Decatur United Methodist Church (Decatur)
• Ebenezer United Methodist Church (Conyers)

Jesse’s House will primarily be run by 20 young adult interns who will live in community with a house pastor on the Emory University Campus.

How you can help

• Serve as a reading volunteer at one of our three sites. Each day (Monday through Thursday) of the summer, each child gets one-on-one reading time with an adult. This cannot happen without dedicated volunteers like you. Groups can sign up to cover one week’s worth of reading volunteers for one site.

• Provide meals for our young adult interns.
  Groups can sign up to cover one week’s worth of meals (Breakfast: Monday through Friday; Dinner: Sunday through Wednesday)

For more information and to sign up to serve, please contact Sarah Paxton (419.296.3177).

We are serving many young children at UMCH these days, and we’ll serve even more this summer with two new Jesse’s House sites opening this summer! We need your help gathering arts and crafts supplies. If you are interested in donating these helpful (and fun!) items, here are our most-needed supplies:

• Packs of construction paper (various colors, small or large size paper)
• Children’s scissors
• Crayons
• Markers (washable, not permanent)
• Scotch tape
• Masking tape
• Staplers
• Pipe cleaners
• Miscellaneous craft supplies (pom-pom balls, brown paper bags, paper plates, etc.)

Donations can be dropped off at UMCH anytime Monday through Friday, from 8:30 to 5:00 p.m. Click here for our address and directions to UMCH. If you have any questions about donating art supplies or any other needs at UMCH, contact Alina Crews.

We need art supplies all year long, but we especially need them before the first children arrive for the summer day camp at Jesse’s House in early June, so please bring your donations soon. Thank you for all you do for our children at UMCH!

… we’re going to say it anyway! It’s National Volunteer Week, and we couldn’t let it pass without saying a huge THANK YOU to all of our amazing volunteers at the Children’s Home. Not a day goes by without someone making a significant contribution of time and energy to make the Children’s Home a better place for the children and families we serve.

Some of our volunteers work directly with our children and families: reading, tutoring, mentoring and child care.

Some work tirelessly in our flea market buildings week after week: collecting, cleaning, pricing and selling items to benefit our programs at UMCH.

Others help us make the Children’s Home a beautiful, safe place to live by painting, cleaning, weeding and planting.

And some feed hearts and stomachs by hosting Agape Meals – preparing dinner and spending time with our children and families on Sunday evenings.

However they give, they give wholeheartedly – with compassion, understanding and generosity. We could not do what we do without our volunteers. This week and every week, we give thanks for them and for everyone who gives sacrificially to join us in “Healing Children, Uniting Families and Changing Lives” at the United Methodist Children’s Home.

Whitehead Hall has served many purposes through the years, but perhaps none so important as the task ahead: housing young mothers and their babies.

So on this glorious day in April, we celebrated the grand opening of the Nurturing Connections Second Chance Program.

The theme for the Open House was… a Baby Shower, of course!

Dr. Richard Puckett, Director of PR & Development at UMCH, welcomed the crowd and opened the short ceremony with a prayer for the young moms and babies who will soon fill the rooms of the building.

Kathy Herren, Acting Deputy Director of the Division of Family and Children Services, spoke and introduced Ron Scroggy.

Ron Scroggy, Acting State Director of the Division of Family and Children Services, spoke to the crowd.

Terence Johnson, Director of Programs at UMCH, introduced the new UMCH employees who will staff the Second Chance program.

The staff of the Second Chance program had the honor of cutting the ribbon.

Inside: one of the bedrooms to be shared by a mom and her baby.

A little girl will no doubt love sleeping in this cute bed!

A sitting/play area

Where the young ones will play!

While the chaos that will bring these young mothers and their babies to us is difficult, we are excited and honored to be able to serve families in this way, and to instill hope and a “second chance” for these youth and their children.

After the Agape Meal on Sunday night, a men’s group from Roswell UMC came to hang out at the Children’s Home. We set up by the lake and roasted marshmallows and made s’mores for a couple of hours. Five of our youth from our Independent Living Program and one of the older children from Family Housing came to hang out. It was not planned this way, but it ended up being an all-guys event, which seemed to be good for all parties. The men talked with the younger men and got to know them and their interests.  Everyone had their fill of s’mores, and some even had more than their stomachs could take.

Then – as often happens when lots of guys get together – some of the younger men had a race, as the men watched and cheered them on. Later the youth played football as the adults watched. It was a great time for a group of older and younger men to get together, finding common ground and having a good time together.

The evening ended as the sun went down, and some of the residents stayed to watch the stars come out. That night, it didn’t feel like we were in Decatur, Georgia, but rather like we had gone somewhere far away, where the distractions of being “plugged in” had disappeared and what was left was food, new friends, and fun by all.

-Dane Martin, Supervisor of Recreation and Activities