Freedom Fund Banquet

Nancy and I attended the Freedom Fund Banquet at the Ramada Inn in Moline last Saturday night. It was sponsored by our Rock Island Chapter of the NAACP.

An important part of the evening was honoring six community members and an organization for their service. I realized that over the years at least four of these persons have touched the life of our church as well.

Judge Thomas Kilbride was honored. Before he was a judge, when he practiced law in Rock Island, he aided the Community Caring Conference with legal representation for some 19 years and I recall him providing legal assistance to the church as well when we needed some direction. We were ready to pay for his help, but he gave the advice without billing us.

Rev. Melvin Grimes was honored. He has been a colleague over the years, and he along with his late father were partners with the Church of Peace in community efforts.

Linda Golden was honored. She is a teacher at Thurgood Marshall Learning Center, and was a partner with the YouthBuild Program that taught kids something about the building trades as they constructed houses. This was part of Rock Island Economic Growth, and the church work camps helped in some of these projects as well.

Vince Thomas was honored. Vince was instrumental in saving Arsenal Courts when the city wanted to tear it down to remove poor people. Reorganized as Century Woods this is where many of the members of our African Light Pentecostal Fellowship reside. It is a resource to our part of town.

Nancy and I saw many friends at the event. One of the benefits of twenty years at the same church is to have built relationships over time.

Jorge Morales - Conference Minister

The Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ elected Rev. Dr. Jorge Morales our Conference Minister on Saturday, June 19, during our annual conference meeting. The conference meeting took place at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Jorge has been a minister in our area for over thirty years now, and most recently has been serving as the Associate Conference Minister. In the photo above he is answering "interview" questions from those of us at conference; he was recommended to us by the search committee.

It is good to have someone in a leadership position that you already know and trust. I have found Jorge an open and helpful colleague in the 20 years I have been a pastor with standing in the Illinois Conference. I am very glad he was selected. The lower photo is the conference standing to applaud the announcement of Jorge's election.

Carla McGreevey; Hometown Hero

One of our church members, Carla McGreevey, was honored by Modern Woodmen of America, a local insurance company, as a "hometown hero." She had been nominated for this honor by Luke Cooley, an employee of Modern Woodmen.

The purpose of the Hometown Hero award is to honor a person who is of great service to the community. In this case the efforts lifted up were her leadership in the "Book Nook" program of the church to supply books to support literacy in our local elementary school. Another area of service mentioned was her help with the Summer Meals program at the church. There were a lot of ways that Carla serves her community that were not mentioned, too.

The honor has at least three components. First off, she was able to invite a group of friends to come to the ballpark for the local minor league baseball team, the Quad Cities Bandits, to have a meal with her. Second, she was able to designate a charity to receive a $100 gift - in her case she selected the Quad Cities Animal Welfare Shelter. Third, she and the group she had invited to dinner we able to watch that evening's ball game from a sky box that is leased by the Modern Woodmen company. And the Bandits won!

The top photo is Carla and Luke with the check. The second photo is of Carla having her hand shaken by the mascot, Bandit, with her friend, Emily giving a big smile. In the bottom photo is Carla and one table of her family and friends enjoying the "tailgate" dinner. Since it had been raining this took place in the clubhouse.

Summer Lunch Program

On Monday, June 7, the Summer meals program for children resumed at the Church of Peace. We serve both breakfast and lunch for any child under the age of 18 years. We have been providing this summer meals program for several years now.

The church prepares and serves the meals with a combination of volunteers and staff. And the meals served here at the church are only a small part of all the meals provided for children in the summer. We also, with delivery persons from the church, provide meals to several other sites in Rock Island where children are assembled.

Nora, the church secretary and manager of the food program, reported to me that in the first week of the program, between June 7 and June 11, we served 451 breakfasts and 1751 lunches. That is quite remarkable!




This meals program is sponsored by the U. S. Department of Agriculture and administered by the Illinois State Department of Education.

This means we need to do a lot of record keeping for the program! But this seems worthwhile when we see the smiles on the faces of children enjoying a good meal.

On this day when the photos were taken the main item on the menu was tacos.


The tacos were accompanied by fruit, cookies and milk.

Summer Program

Well, the Summer Program here at Church of Peace is up and running and it its second day now. These quick photos are of the activities for children that are taking place daily. The top photo is of the youngest group of students, and they focus on reading. I love the three little girls on the sofa with their books!

The second photo is of some instruction about nutrition that is taking place with an older group.

The third picture is of the oldest group, somewhat fewer in number on this rainy day. They are with an actor from a local group doing some theater exercizes.

The fellow at the bottom is the technician from the Hobart diswashing machinecompany. It turns out that we have a difficulty, which of course only became apparent when we were putting the machine to the test on the first day!


Another opening, another show.

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