Outreach Team – January 2026
Our members include Chris Kollen as lead, Carol Buuck, Phyllis Teager, Patty Clymer, Sandy Mitchel, Janette Carollo, Ruth Gross, Carlene Alegria, Darlene Wager and Gail Nicewander. We’d like to welcome Darlene Wager as the newest member of Outreach! Welcome Darlene!
We are planning new and exciting projects this coming year. If you have any questions about any of our activities, contact Chris Kollen at lizzykollen@comcast.net or at 520-419-7475.
The Mission and Purpose of Outreach is: “…to make Christ known through Christian outreach to nurture our community, family, and personal relationship with God through living examples. Specifically, we strive to provide support and aid to those within and beyond our community, working to involve the church membership at large.”
Marana Food Bank
Outreach will be changing how we help the Marana Food Bank. Instead of including monthly appeals, we will instead be holding four concentrated drives during the year. Two will be focused on hygiene supplies and two will be concentrated on what food they are most in need of at the Marana Food Bank. The hygiene drives will benefit both the Marana Food Bank and Butler’s Pantry and will be held in February and August. The food drives for Marana Food Bank will be held in May and September.
As before, if you would like to donate and keep your gift for the needy of Marana, you can send a check to:
MFB-CRC
c/o Sahuarita Food Bank
PO Box 968
Sahuarita, AZ 85629
Please make checks payable to Marana Food Bank – Community Resource Center or MFB-CRC.
You can also donate online at mfb-crc.org.
Your monetary gift goes a long way.
Past Events
Adopt a Child – Roadrunner Elementary
I wanted to thank everyone and provide an update on the Adopt a Family drive that was just completed. Everyone at Lord of Grace is amazing – for a relatively small congregation, with God’s blessings, we were able to show families at Roadrunner Elementary how much God loves them by providing them with some needed clothing and shoes and a gift (some examples include: toys, games, sport equipment, science kits, art supplies, books, skate boards, and bikes) for the Christmas season.
We were able to bless 10 families – 20 children ranging in ages from 2 to 16 that would not be able to afford these gifts on their own. We were also able to provide gift cards for all 10 parents and cash for the families – both worth a total of about $860.
The Outreach team came together on Dec. 7th after the Community lunch to go over all the gifts, gift cards and cash we received to make sure we had everything and to organize the gifts by family. To give some context on the scale of Roadrunner’s Adopt a Family drive, our church and other groups together were able to provide gifts for 200 children of Roadrunner Elementary families.
In addition, the Outreach team provided clothing and gifts for a Sudanese refugee family for the mother and her 7 children ranging in ages from 4 to 21. Patty Clymer works with the mother as a mentor through Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest.
Outreach delivered all of the gifts to Roadrunner on December 8th, the staff at Roadrunner were very appreciative and thanked Lord of Grace for being able to provide Christmas gifts for the families. Patty delivered the clothing and gifts to the refugee family from Sudan on December 17th and they were very thankful.
Upcoming Events
Feed My Starving Children
This is a reminder to anyone interested, to sign up for Feed My Starving Children packing event. Our day and time is February 7th from 8-10am. Sign up is online, use the following QR Code or http://ovcn.church/fmsc and select packing event. Or you can go directly to https://myovcn.churchcenter.com/registrations/events/2931977. You will need to select Shift 18, then select Lord of Grace. We will need to sign up by January 12th, when they open up registration.
Lutheran World Relief – Baby Care Packs
We plan on holding a drive in March for baby care packs to send to Lutheran World Relief. In 2025, they provided baby care packs to Angola, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, United States, and Zimbabwe in 2025. More information to come in the February newsletter.
Upcoming Outreach events for the next 6 months: January (sign-up), for Feed My Starving Children February – Feed My Starving Children; Hygiene Drive March - LWR Baby Care Kits
April – Habitat Day (potential activity)
May – Sister Jose supper; Food Drive for Marana Food Bank
June – Backpacks and school supplies drive for Roadru