United Methodist Women at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Asheville is 100% in giving to The Legacy Fund. All thirty-one members both active and inactive have given or had given in their honor at least $18.69 per year each year, 2015-2019, over and above their pledge plus an additional $186.90 per year in the name of our unit. According to our records our total giving to date is: $9,940.53.
How did we do it? We began back in January 2015, by talking about the wonderful legacy we had inherited from all of our predecessor organizations, and, sadly, our recognition that the plight of women, children and youth in today’s world is even more dire than back in 1869 when the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society was founded. Some in our group are retired missionaries and deaconesses who shared something of their work and how important it is that not only the ministries in which they had been involved should be sustained for the next 150 years but that United Methodist Women needs to continue to meet new and emerging needs on into the future.
As we discussed the 150th Anniversary Celebration to be observed on March 23, 2019, we committed ourselves to each component of the Celebration: 1) Celebrating our Past, 2) Strengthening our Local Unit as we focused on the future, and 3) Building The Legacy Fund Endowment. Each member was given the information sheet developed by our Conference Legacy Fund Advisory Committee that provided not only complete information about The Legacy Fund but had on the reverse side provision for individual pledges and an opportunity for gifts to The Legacy Fund in memory/honor of persons important to each individual: mother, grandmother, sister or other person most responsible for encouraging them to join United Methodist Women.
A record was kept of each individual pledge plus their special gifts with regular reports on our total giving to the Unit and reminders to each individual giver. Initially six members, recognizing that they might not live long enough to join in the 2019 Celebration, paid all five years in 2015 – four of whom have already made their transition into life eternal. In January 2018, realizing that we were already almost there, our Unit decided to complete all of our payments for the five years and become the first Unit in our Conference to be 100% — and…
“We Did It!”
Betty J. Letzig — Local Unit Treasurer
