“This year, we are trying something new. On Memorial Day, we are going to have a community Home Run Derby”

Ice cream and a Home Run Derby are going to help send a group of Coweta County young people to Appalachia for a missions project.

The youth of White Oak Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Senoia, GA (in Coweta County, south of Atlanta) are looking forward to a visit to the mountainous region this year. The project “is sponsored by our denomination, and we have participated for the past four years,” said James W. McManus, the church pastor of family and youth.

“The premise of the trip is we go to the Cumberland Gap region, where Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee all meet, and spend a week doing VBS for local churches,” McManus said. Generally, the churches do not have the means to mount Vacation Bible School on their own.

“We come in and put one on for them and the community,” McManus explained.

The group from White Oak has established a relationship with a United Methodist congregation in Jonesville, Va. “We will be going back this July to do VBS for them,” McManus said. “It is a wonderful trip with a lot of mission work done by us, and we are ministered to also.”

The trip to Virginia will cost about $7,000 and White Oak’s young people — and others in the congregation — are already busy finding ways to raise money for this year’s outreach project.