First Congregational Church of Cheshire

Outreach and Missions

We are called to be instruments of God’s love and justice.
As a church, we provide:

• support for AIDS orphans in the African country of Malawi through our Malawi Mission.
Click here to see a gallery of photos of the children from Malawi, including short video clips. If you missed Amy and Robin's Thank-you brunch and travelogue, click here for a brochure about the Malawi Orphan Project. (This form is provided in Abobe® PDF format. It may be viewed and printed out using Adobe® Reader. If you do not have Adobe® Reader, you may obtain it free by going to the Adobe® website, www.adobe.com, or clicking on the logo.)
The Malawi Mission Team's website, http://malawi-ministry.tripod.com/, has more information.

•Mission Day, an ongoing project for the Board of Outreach at First Congregational Church. Mission Day provides opportunities for our church members and friends to participate in a day of mission work at local charitable organization sites, such as Christian Community Action (CCA), Columbus House, Chrysalis in Meriden; and Safe Haven in Waterbury.Begun in the fall of 2005, the Board in 2006 sponsored a smaller spring event in May,and a larger autumn event in October.Click here to view photo galleries of our Fall 2006 group gathering in the morning in the Parish Hall for breakfast and a send-off prayer, andteams at the work sites.

• monthly financial support for our missionaries and mission projects here at home and around the world through United Church of Christ Local and Wider Ministries.

• monthly financial support for the Greater Waterbury Interfaith Ministries which provides services through its soup kitchen (feeding over 40,000 people per year) and food pantry (providing food for over 14,000 people per year). Clothing, hygiene products, diapers, and formula are also distributed. Our church provides volunteers to serve at the soup kitchen on two Sundays of each year. On the first Sunday of each month, we take a food offering of non-perishable items for the food pantry.

• monthly financial support for Christian Community Action, New Haven which provides housing for the homeless and those in crisis. Daily needs of these individuals/families are also met by CCA’s staff. Our church has done a workday project at the shelter, painting rooms, building shelves, doing repair jobs, etc.

• a meal for the those staying at the Columbus House shelter in New Haven on the fifth Wednesday of the month. Special treats have also been provided for New Year’s Eve, Halloween, and other holidays.

• for Covenant-to-Care: monetary help, Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas presents, clothing, furniture, school uniforms, etc. Covenant-to-Care is our partnership with the State of Connecticut’s social services department, through which we donate specific clothing and household items that social workers need but cannot secure themselves.

• funds for Cheshire Food and Fuel Assistance through the Department of Human Services, the Connecticut Food Bank, Operation Fuel, Cheshire Interfaith Housing, Habitat for Humanity (New Haven), Safe-Haven women’s shelter in Waterbury, Chrysalis (shelter) of Meriden-Wallingford, Sage Senior Services, and many others.

• for special projects; such as, health kits for the children of Iraq, and school supplies and food for the children at Helping Hands School in Haiti.

Our Church School children have been supporting Heifer Project International as a Lenten project for many years. Each Church School class chooses an animal (chicken, goat, cow, etc.) that it would like to purchase, then comes up with ideas to raise the necessary funds. Over a thousand dollars is raised each year to purchase a variety of animals.

Our church, our youth groups, and the Colonizers (women’s group) all support children through the United Church of Christ and through Compassion.

Our three women's groups (Colonizers, Ladies Aid, and Tuesday Circle) provide financial support for many local projects; such as shelters, food banks, fuel assistance, Covenant-to-Care, etc.

We are always looking for opportunities to extend God’s love to our neighbors, near and far.