Lutheran Urban Mission Agency-LUMA

Monday was a great day for Bessie’s House! Bessie’s House had been meeting in the fellowship hall at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. Since COVID, they have been meeting outside so they can still get together safely and be provided with needed items.

Saturday we had quite a few volunteers representing LUMA at Blessings Abound. It was a great time! Blessings Abound is a wonderful volunteer organization, and their proceeds help benefit LUMA and other local non-profit organizations. If you or someone you know would like to volunteer, please visit www.blessingsaboundkc.org/volunteers.html for more details.

Thank you to the LUMA Auxiliary ladies for your continued support! Even though COVID has temporarily stopped the Auxiliary meetings, these amazing ladies still find a way to gather up and supply much needed items for our clients.

Here are a few pictures of our food pantry last week. We are open every Thursday, 9:30am-12pm, except during major holidays. We are thankful for our hardworking volunteers, and wonderful clients!

LUMA in action! Our Director, Pastor Brad Zerkel, dropping off masks to Beautiful Savior nursing home, and our Administrative Assistant, Cindy Rolf, handing out masks for Phoenix Family who help at another local senior community.

Bessie’s House meets at the Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer every week, rain or shine. Dale Lightfoot of Lightfoot Ministries picks up donated food from multiple stores and drops off the items to Bessie’s House, Our Redeemer, and other local KC areas for those who need it. We are happy to help these wonderful organizations.

We are excited the Lutheran High School of Kansas City started the new school year this week. Since they are full-time, in-person classes, we donated 100 masks to help with their safety procedures. Pictured here is our Director, Pastor Zerkel, and LHS's Executive Director/Principal, Dr. Stelmachowicz. We pray the kids and staff have a great school year!

One of our pantry guests needed desks for her grandchildren since they will be virtual learning with her for school. A friend of our Community Outreach Coordinator donated desks for them. Thank you for being such a blessing!

We received a nice donation of food, paper goods, and school supplies from King of Kings. Thank you! We’d also like to thank Cindy from King of Kings for dropping these off.

Our HappyBottoms Diaper clients are all smiles!

A few pictures from the Pray on Troost event last Friday. It was a great turn out! People lined up all along Troost.

We would like to invite you to join us in a public prayer vigil called Pray on Troost, this Friday evening, June 19th, from 7-8pm. Troost Avenue has historic significance in the Kansas City area as a dividing line of racism. June 19th, Juneteenth, is a day of historic racial significance as well. The goal of this prayer vigil is to pray at this place of pain for God to do his healing work. This is not a worship service; this is Christians gathering anywhere along the 10-m...ile length of Troost to pray silently. This is not meant to be political. The organizers have deliberately chosen to not endorse any group or statement. Participants are asked to stand, not kneel, to avoid any association with that controversy. The intent is simply to pray for God’s reconciling work to be done. You can learn more about it at www.prayontroost.org. Before 7pm, we are inviting everyone to gather at Immanuel Lutheran on 42nd and Tracy Ave, two blocks east of Troost, which is the site of our historic involvement in this area. We will have water, snacks, hand sanitizer, and masks available for any who need them. We will then walk the two blocks to Troost, where we will join in silent prayer for an hour. We will return to Immanuel for a concluding group prayer at the end of the evening. Those who can’t come are invited to set aside that hour to pray from home. We recognize that time is short. We only recently became aware of this event ourselves. This is a step towards tearing down the dividing wall of hostility (Eph 2:14) that exists because of sin. It is not the first step and it won’t be the last. We hope you will join us for this one. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade othersFor the love of God controls us, because we have concluded this: that One has died for all, therefore all have died; and He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the fleshTherefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespass against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors of Christ, God making His appeal through us. 2 Cor 5:11a, 14-16a, 17-20a.