Good news, and
not so great news.

Dear First Family, 

It has been quite a week! 

I have some good news to share with you, and some not so great news to share with you. 

First, the good news! 

While Texas has had record setting temperatures, we have had 20 work teams out in our community serving with grace and love. United Mission Week was a huge success in so many ways. 

Attached at the bottom of this email are some pictures representing all that happened at United Mission Week. Although these images can’t fully capture everything; these faces, these students, Included participants, work team adults, and all of the leadership represented in them are what made this week special. If you needed a tangible example of the success of United Mission Week, we had our first ever baptism during the eleven year run of United Mission Week at the closing worship service last night. It was truly a special time for Pastor Thomas and all of the Student Ministry staff as well as those who attended the service. If you served at United Mission Week I want to say thank you and I’m proud of you. If you trusted us with your child or grandchild this week, I want to thank you for sharing them with us. If you did not have a chance to be part of United Mission Week, know that your church is a church that loves our students and loves our community. You can join me in being proud of all that was accomplished this week. If you feel called, I want to invite you to send our student ministry staff an email sharing your gratitude for all that they did this week. They are an incredible team and a blessing to First Methodist Mansfield. 

Now for some not so great news. Due to some plumbing problems upstairs in building A, we experienced some pretty extensive flooding late yesterday afternoon. This all happened as teams were finishing up their jobs and getting ready to go to closing worship. A big thank you to all those who showed up and helped get things moved and cleaned up as best as you could, including many of our volunteers at United Mission Week who were heading to closing worship. It was truly a blessing. 

Here is what that means for this weekend, we will be having Family Worship at all three of our worship services. Building A will not be in use this weekend as we evaluate its condition and come up with a plan for the days and weeks to come. This means our nursery, children’s ministry, student ministry and music ministry will not be able to use that building at this time. This is a very temporary solution. We will do our very best to get our nursery, children’s ministry, and music ministry up and running again very very soon in that building.  My prayer is that you and your whole family plan to join us in worship this weekend. We have so much to celebrate, and what better way to celebrate than for us to celebrate as a family with one another’s families. Invite your children to bring their Bibles as we continue our season of reading through Ephesians together. 

One thing I am proud of here at First Methodist Mansfield is that we show up. We show up when it is needed in our community and we show up for one another. We were blessed to see that come to life this week, and for that I am thankful. 

Grace and Peace,
Pastor David