Homeless

The Parish Nurse Program is a ministry supported by many congregations throughout the Greater Manchester area.  Trained nurses rotate throughout the sponsor churches to provide a variety of services such as checking blood pressure and pulse, referral to a community clinic, and health education.   At First United Methodist Church, parish nurses are available on every Tuesday from 9am till 11am.  The church also hosts many health clinics for foot care, immunization, nutrition, etc.  More information about the Parish Nurse Program can be found by calling (603) 625-4018.

Food Pantry: Every Tuesday from 9:00 am to 11:30 am

In 1991 FUMC created a small shelf to collect canned goods each week to help the needy in the community. Now our food pantry serves more than 10,000 individuals with more than 60,000 meals worth of food every year. Every Tuesday morning we serve on average 200 people and each person receives 6 meals worth of food. We welcome our clients with coffee and goodies each week.

Running the pantry is not just one day work. It requires many hands and many hearts.   The volunteer opportunities are:

• Picking Up Food on Weekdays (usually Mondays and Saturdays)
• Stacking the Food on the day of delivery
• Tuesday morning crew between 10 to 12 people

“I can’t believe how loving, cheerful, and gracious all the volunteers who have been help my daughters and me. Without your support I feel we could never make it thru this tough economic time. This church offers hope and faith to many on the Eastside of Manchester…Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”  A mother with two daughters writes about our pantry and church.

All this work is done by volunteers and generous donations. We invite you to join us in doing our best to have our neighbors have daily bread on their table.  If you want to volunteer, please contact the church.  If you would like to make a financial contribution to our efforts, please click here to make a donation.

During the season of Lent in 2006, a few volunteers from FUMC tries a new way of fasting,  Lent calls for fasting primarily two purposes: one is to participate in the suffering of Jesus and the other is to abstain from things that would keep us away from God and God’s will.   We discovered that many in our city are fasting at least a meal a day every day.   Most of shelters in our city do not or cannot provide lunch for the homeless.   They have to skip lunch if they cannot afford it.  We realized while we need fasting, the homeless and the hungry in our city needed feasting, not fasting!  This reminded us of what God has revealed about true fasting through the prophet Isaiah;

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Ever since the Lenten season, faithful volunteers from our church have been preparing and bringing warm lunch with warmer spirit to the Victory Park at the heart of Manchester on every Wednesday at Noon.  Volunteers prepare the meal on Wednesday morning from 8am and bring the food at noon.  We serve around 100 meals each time.

You can come to cook, to share, to serve. But most importantly we invite you and any in our city to come and get to know our friends in the city as we share the lunch together!

If you are interested in volunteering, please contact the church for more information.  If you would like to make a financial contribution to our efforts, please click here to make a donation.

Have you ever had a breakfast with Jesus?   If not, we have an open invitation to have four breakfasts with Jesus.  All men, regardless of age, are invited to join together to have breakfast with Jesus on the last Saturday of the month. At 6:00 a.m. on last Saturday of the month, we gather for prayer at the church kitchen and then we prepare breakfast sandwiches and hot coffee not only for us but also for those in our community who are staying cold nights on the streets and under the bridges.  We also visit the Labor Ready where people looking for any daily job gather as well as people in the park. I am sure it will not just be the breakfast but the heart of Jesus that we share with our brothers and sisters on the street. They are Jesus with whom we have breakfast because Jesus told us so. “I was hungry and you gave me food… Lord when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food….` Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of the least, you did it to me”  (Matthew 25)  

We make and serve around 70 breakfast sandwiches. 

Also you can join the Muffin Man on any of the other Saturdays to reach out to the homeless who stay on streets and the woods. Wade Ewing, our church member, has been visiting them on every Saturday morning with muffins, coffee, batteries, socks, tarps, blankets, or anything that might help the homeless.  Please contact the church if you are interested in joining the Muffin Man who literally lives in Manchester!!!

If you can't physically help us with this ministry, but you would like to make a financial contribution to assist us with our efforts, please click here to make a donation.