Category: Pathfinders

Categories
Oshkosh Pathfinders

ACS at Oshkosh Pathfinder Camporee

Adventist Community Services Disaster Response was engaged in the International Pathfinder Camporee that was held August 12-17 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. ACS personnel from the Texas, Arkansas-Louisiana, and Greater New York conferences offered tremendous help in ensuring that we offered two Pathfinder Honors to hundreds of our young people who visited our stations. Several attendees were appreciative of the opportunity to not only obtain a Pathfinder Honor, but to also be able to serve their community in the future with the skills and knowledge provided. The focus was based around Preparedness and Recovery efforts, both areas ACS DR is involved in throughout the year.

Pathfinder clubs from around the world stopped by and took advantage of our stations. Texas and Arkansas-Louisiana conferences led our efforts in educating and preparing individuals for tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. The children appeared engrossed as they sat and listened to Lavida Whitson and Beverly Wynot who stressed the importance of ensuring readiness before a crisis. Marshall and Julie Gonzales took each participant through the actual hands-on work that goes into filling flood buckets with supplies. The young people showed an excitement that seemed to resonate throughout Area 51, where we were located.

The positive vibe continued as groups were then whisked away to our Rebuild station led by Walter Harris of Greater New York Conference. Here they were informed about what happens during some of the events we generally respond to. Moreover, they were able to work on a makeshift home, preparing drywall replacement in a room… the very work we participated in during several hurricane Recovery efforts in the past few years. Tools and equipment were used by the youth and they thoroughly seemed to enjoy the real work they actually got to assist. “Some of them spoke of wanting to do more, and our hope is we’ve created a desire that we’ll be able to provide opportunity in the future,” stated W. Derrick Lea, NAD ACS DR director.

In addition to the sheer enjoyment that seemed to permeate the activities, by the end of the week not only had we ensured hundreds of young people visiting our stations, we were able to prepare 5,000 flood buckets that were then transported around the NAD. These complete buckets will now be housed until needed for the next disaster.

Click here to view photos from this event.

Categories
Local Conference Pathfinders

UCC Pathfinder Outreach

On May 18-20, the Upper Columbia Conference conducted a large Pathfinder Camporee which involved around 750 kids. The UCC Associate Director of the Pathfinder Club, Richie Brower, who is passionate about community services, planned an outreach project for the Pathfinders attending the camporee. His goal was to have the attendees fill ACS DR flood buckets with $16,000 worth of products and store them for future disasters. We partnered with them in this endeavor by providing 480 buckets. The UCC ACS funded 225 more white buckets which had large ACS/Pathfinder labels stuck on them. The money for the supplies to go inside the buckets were given by donors.

The flood buckets prepared by the Pathfinders will be utilized in response to the recent flooding that took place in Northern Washington this week. Ferry County will take 100 buckets at the Sheriff’s office. Fifteen buckets will go to the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation at Tribal Headquarters in Nespelem. Pend Oreille County will pick up ten buckets here at the office. UCC ACS will also be sharing fifty buckets with Montana Conference, and the remainder with Texas Conference.

Categories
Hurricanes Partnership Pathfinders

New Braunfels Pathfinders Respond to Harvey

The Pathfinder Club of the New Braunfels SDA Church in Texas, “Ambassadors for Christ”, participated in community outreach for the Hurricane Harvey Disaster Relief. A group of nine pathfinders helped out at the Multi-Agency Warehouse managed by Adventist Community Services in San Antonio on Sunday, October 1. They were divided into two groups. One group was in charge of sorting the personal Care Package items by putting each individual item into a large box of the same item category. By the time they were done, they had around 25 different boxes of individual items, all labeled and ready to be distributed. Another group opened up boxes of new underwear for boys and girls and packaged them in smaller boxes of six. They taped up the boxes, labeled each of them with a special code number, and loaded them on a pallet.

This enthusiastic bunch of volunteers had been looking forward to an entire day of work; however, they were able to finish the tasks assigned to them in just three hours. “We were prepared to stay all day but the jobs we were doing were completed. We are hoping to go back and help,” said Debbie Edmiston, Director of “Ambassadors for Christ”. And, sure enough, they continue to volunteer their dedicated time and efforts on Sundays at the San Antonio Warehouse. We sincerely appreciate these young people who are setting an example for other children to be involved in community outreach.

This Pathfinder Club was started in 2005 with the intention of reaching out to the young people from the surrounding neighborhoods to give them a positive avenue in life. One of the ways they were able to do that was to have their Pathfinders invite their non-Adventist friends or cousins. Vacation Bible School also played a significant role in getting children to join the Club. Debbie stated, “The Lord has blessed our Club through the years in many ways. And the Lord is still blessing us with boys and girls from our church and from the surrounding neighborhoods to this present day!”.