Adult Education at RUMC
Our Hispanic Lay Pastor, Norma Encarnacion, with the support of ECHO, is leading classes in English as a Second Language (ESOL) as well as GED classes in both English and Spanish. These classes are being held on Thursdays, from 7:00 PM until 9:00 PM. It is not too late to enroll. You can contact Lay Pastor Norma for additional information (813)389-3607 or email her at norma.vega1@verizon.net.
Prayer and Connect Cards
If you or someone you know needs prayer, please fill out the yellow Prayer and Connect Card located on the back of each pew. These cards are passed along to the Prayer Warriors of RUMC. Our Prayer Warriors meet every Sunday in Room #8 immediately after the service for 15 minutes of prayer. It is their honor to pray for you and your concerns.
Also, Prayer and Connect Cards can be used if you want the church to know that you are interested in becoming a member, or if you would like to receive more information about our church
If you would like to be added to our church directory, included in our church email blasts, or have your birthday and anniversary included in our monthly newsletter, please complete a Prayer and Connect Card and include in the Sunday offering plate. You can also visit the church office on most business day mornings, or you can contact us by phone or email.
Stop by our White Cabinet
The white cabinet in Crichton Fellowship Hall is “information central” for our church members and visitors. The cabinet contains RUMC news, information and community resources. It includes our calendar of events, church forms, bulletins, prayer trees, sign-up sheets, and more.
8002 U. S. Highway 301 South, Riverview, FL 33578 813-677-5995
Normal Weekly Recurring
Events at RUMC
(Call the church office at 677-5995 for more information about these or other events sponsored by the church.)
SUNDAY
8:00 AM Early Worship Service--Fellowship Hall
9:00 AM Sunday School for All Ages
9:00 AM Children's Choir
10:00 AM Refreshments & Relationships
10:30 AM Worship Service
11:45 AM Prayer Warriors--Rm 8
12:00 PM Hispanic Congregation Service
5:00 PM Adult Praise Band
6:00 PM Youth Band Rehearsal
7:00 PM R.U.S.H. Youth Group—Youth Building
MONDAY
7:00-9:30 PM Southern Company Chorus Rehearsal —Fellowship Hall
7:00 PM Cub Scouts Meet--Classrooms
TUESDAY
10:00 AM--Noon RESTORE Food Bank and Thrift Store Open*
10:30 AM--Metropolitan Ministry Free Luncheon
6:30 PM Boy Scout Troop #83—Fellowship Hall
WEDNESDAY
6:30-7:30 AM AA Meeting—Rm 8
6:00 PM Fellowship Supper—Fellowship Hall
6:45 PM Children & Youth Activities
6:45 PM Hispanic Church Bible Study —Fellowship Hall
7:00 PM Ladies Bible Study—Fran Carillo's Home
THURSDAY
6:30-7:30 AM AA Meeting—Rm 8
10:00 AM--Noon RESTORE Food Bank and Thrift Store Open*
6:30 PM Chancel Choir Rehearsal
7:00-9:00 PM--Adult Education (ESOL and GED)--Rms 7 & 8
FRIDAY
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SATURDAY
9:00 AM RUMC Book Club, 9720 Lorrayne Avenue, Riverview
*RESTORE is an equal opportunity provider and is open to the public.
Combatting Angola’s
Health Crisis
In my arms is Salvador Alberto Dáurio. He died in 2018 at 3 years of age from malaria, a curable disease. Because of Angola’s health crisis, many children like Salvador die every year from preventable and curable diseases like malaria, intestinal parasites, upper respiratory infections, decaying teeth, typhoid fever, malnutrition, and others.
With support from churches and individuals in the United States, volunteer groups from Florida take several hundred pounds of prescription medications every year to the Quessua Methodist Mission in Angola. Over 2,500 children in the area receive medical care at the Mission station’s hospital at no cost to their farmer families.
These medications include anti-malaria, anti-parasites, vitamins, antibiotics, as well as drugs to manage high blood pressure and a host of other maladies. They make, literally, a life and death difference. There are people dying for lack of medicine!
The Alumni of the Quessua Mission (AEAQ), our partners on site, provide all the logistics and accountability for the proper use of these valuable resources and ensure that help gets to the most needed and vulnerable communities.
Until December 31 this year, Global Missions of the Florida United Methodist Conference is making available a matching grant of up to $4,000 towards the purchase of medicines for the Quessua Mission hospital in East Angola.
Please consider this opportunity to support a life-transforming ministry. For more information on the East Angola/Florida Partnership, visit www.flumc-missions.org.
Make check payable to “Florida Conference Treasurer” and send it to:
FLORIDA UNITED METHODIST CENTER
Attn: Icel Rodriguez
450 Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue
Lakeland, FL 33815
(Write “Adv# 102040 - East Angola Health Initiative” on the memo line)
Cornerstone Ministry in Tampa
“A lot may dream when you dare to happen.” That inverted phrase could be the motto for Tampa-based Cornerstone Family Ministries. Cornerstone is an outreach ministry of the Florida Conference and a National Missions Institution of United Methodist Women. The organization is motivated by reverence for the past, goals for the present and dreams for the future of children living at-risk or unchurched.
Cornerstone was founded by the foremothers of The United Methodist Church. Executive Director Cathy Stone traces the organization's lineage to 1892, six years after the first cigar factory opened in Tampa and seven decades before segregation was declared illegal in the United States.
"That was a time when the settlement movement started moving across the country within The United Methodist Church, and so there was a lot of interest in the Tampa Bay area because of the immigrants who were coming through here," Stone said.
Cornerstone dared to happen more than a century ago so that many may dream.
Today, Cornerstone provides accredited early childhood instruction to nearly 100 children at the Rosa Valdez Center & Lab School in Tampa. The organization's impact on children goes well beyond the classroom. Cornerstone sponsors a network of 177 mostly small childcare centers in five counties—Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Polk and Manatee (during the 2018-19 school year).
Children receive breakfast, lunch and a snack through a program run by the Florida Department of Health. Cornerstone doesn't prepare or deliver the food. It trains the center directors, provides technical assistance and follows up. More than $6.2 million was reimbursed to these privately-owned childcare providers during the 2017-18 fiscal year, allowing nearly 20,000 children to receive almost 5.5 million nutritious meals. About 75 percent of the children live at or below the poverty line.
There is a small, but important, religious component. Four times a year (usually religious holidays) nearby churches provide children weekend care packages that include invitations for their families to drop in on Sunday.
"The majority of what we do is out in the field," Stone said. "There is a great potential for United Methodist churches to come around those children and their families (in the five counties) and to actually invite them ... to come be a part of their church." A little outreach can bear fruit. When families are invited to local churches through the 150 childcare centers, the children may help grow the Methodist church when they are older. "It's a huge opportunity," she said. "There are 20,000 children, and we would assume that a good number of them may not have a church home and may find the Methodist church right for them.
"We certainly know, if nothing else, that members of the Methodist church are very generous with mission, with volunteering, with loving on children and families. We would love to see that connection be stronger and for the Methodist church to look at Cornerstone for those opportunities."
To learn more about the outreach efforts of Cornerstone Ministry in Tampa, go to this link.
Methodist Women Celebrate
150 Years
Since the United Methodist Women formed 150 years ago, it has been about breaking boundaries and filling needed missionary roles.
Before the UMW, women routinely were kept from leadership positions in the church. That began to change when the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society organized in Boston in 1869. It was an attempt to address women’s health issues in India, and the missionary field has never been the same since.
The growth of the UMW hasn’t been easy though. UMW members have had to overcome the rules of society and the limits imposed by their own national and racial identities in order to assume vital leadership roles. They have been ever fearless, daring to be outrageous and even unladylike, if necessary, to fulfill their role in God’s plan for transformation.
In the 1880s, Christian women affirmed the importance of being in mission, organizing to raise funds and offering themselves as volunteers. They found that to be active in missions, they had to overcome unfair social restrictions put on them because of their gender.
A study of that struggle was the focus of the United Methodist Women of the Florida Conference at its spiritual enrichment retreat on September 7th at the Life Enrichment Center in Fruitland Park.
The experience took participants back in time by focusing on their heritage. UMW remains committed to be bold, vibrant and vital, while carrying out God’s command to serve those in need. For a fuller exploration of the history of the United Methodist Women, see this article at the Florida Conference website.
