Outreach

St. Mary’s Food Pantry Ministries

St. Mary’s supports two local food pantries. We encourage you to bring non-perishable items to help us stock these food pantries! Looking for suggestions? The button below directs you to a shopping list! Leave your food donations at St. Mary’s in the basket by the Chapel. The Food Pantry Committee will transport them to these two pantries:

Student Food Pantry - ministry of Episcopal Campus Ministry in partnership with Food for Lane County, Grace Lutheran Church, and UO

FISH – Friends in Service to Humanity, located in Trinity United Methodist Church

Saturday Breakfast - Feed Our Hungry Neighbors

St. Mary’s feeds over 900 of our hungry neighbors every month through our weekly Saturday breakfast. This amazing ministry relies on volunteers. Will you join us and sign up to prepare breakfast and/or deliver to the various sites in town? Visit our SignUp.com page by clicking the button below and see the variety of tasks you can sign up for. Sign up alone or with a friend. If you have questions or cannot sign up online, reach out to Dick Zeller rwzeller@comcast.net or Holly Cabell hollycabell@gmail.com.

Turning Your Bottles and Cans into Housing

Through our bottle and can redemption efforts, we are supporting our unhoused neighbors! We have already adopted two huts through Community Supported Shelters, in the name of St. Mary’s. This is an ongoing fundraiser to support Community Supported Shelters, and in 2023 we have collected over $1,800 and are well on our way to the $3,000 needed to adopt a third hut. Many parishioners collect bottles and cans from neighbors, too. Every little bit helps to provide housing to those in need. We have pre-labeled Bottle Drop collection bags for you to take home and fill. Return them to us or take them directly to Bottle Drop.

Local Partnerships For Addressing Your Carbon Footprint

If you have ever worried about your “carbon footprint” or wanted to support local ecological restoration, the new partnerships developed by St. Mary’s Earth Stewards will enable you to make a difference.

St. Mary’s Earth Stewards have previously provided education and encouragement around carbon offsets as one way to be stewards of God’s Creation, especially as it pertains to climate change. Carbon offsets are when an individual funds the implementation of an activity that leads to the sequestration/storage of atmospheric carbon to offset their lifestyle choices which release carbon into the atmosphere.

Recently, Earth Stewards looked into local options for counterbalancing carbon outputs, and began working with organizations to develop the necessary relationships. We agreed that the Long Tom Watershed Council (LTWC) and McKenzie River Trust (MRT) would be the two most appropriate organizations (due to geographic overlap, mission, efficacy, capacity, etc.). Together, we created the Earth Care Interfaith Fund. Funds donated to McKenzie River Trust and Long Tom Watershed Council are used for planting trees, grasses and shrubs, restoration of wetlands, recovery from wildfire damage, and other techniques aimed at absorbing cardoon dioxide, sequestering carbon in the soil and protecting our water resources.

That’s My Farmer

St. Mary’s supports local farmers through Lane County Interfaith That’s My Farmer Community supported Agriculture (CSA) and Low Income Fund program.

The sale of Farmer Bucks encourages parishioners to eat fresh, locally produced food while donations to the Low Income CSA Fund help others to do the same.

Earth Stewards

We are a group of members who are concerned about lowering energy use and costs both for individual families and the church and thus helping to preserve our environment for future generations. We have put on programs to help our parishioners be better stewards of God's creation by reducing their carbon footprint, reducing their waste, and living more simply. We have helped the church become more "green" with various efforts such as green solutions on building upgrades, implementing compost, using recycled material, and upgrading to "green" cleaning materials. For all of these efforts, in 2013, we received a BRING Recycling RE:Think Business Certification and also the Environmental Award at Diocesan Convention.

Ho!Ho!Ho!

This is the ECW Christmas stocking project, chaired by Deacon Nancy Crawford. A sewing party to make the stockings from donated fabric is held at the church in November and with the help of many parishioners, young and old, approximately 170 stockings are made, filled, and distributed. Many people are blessed by this ministry, from the fillers and the receivers to the caseworkers who presented the stockings to delighted parents for their children.

United Thank Offering

United Thank Offering is an ingathering taken annually at churches throughout the Diocese and is our chance to give thanks for our blessings through giving. The money is used to create projects around the world that care for the poor.

Jail/Prison Ministry

Jail/Prison Ministry provides an opportunity for Christians to live their faith by helping prisoners while incarcerated and to return to the community.

Missionary Work

Bob and Joyce Carlson – Wycliffe Bible Translators: Members of St. Mary’s since 1982, Bob and Joyce Carlson continue to spend most of their time in Africa as part of Wycliffe Bible Translators non-denominational missionary team. Bob has recently completed the translation of the New Testament into the Supyire It has been published and distributed to speakers of this Senoufo language in Farakala, Mali.

Joyce continues to assist Bob and to work on her own literacy project - a cultural anthropological study of children’s school enrollment and education and its place in the social structure and of the Malian family.

The birthday and anniversary money that is put in the small wooden church on the first Sunday of every month is an offering that is given to the Carlsons’ ministry. Additional gifts of support are accepted throughout the year.

To keep up with the Carlsons, check out their website: http://www.askingfortheroad.com/