Ministries Beyond Ourselves
You are invited to work alongside us as we strive to live out the Gospel message in our community and globally. Here are some opportunities to partner with us:
Community Outreach:
Mobile Meals
Mobile Meals – is a network of community volunteers with the mission to serve seniors, disabled, or home-bound individuals by delivering healthy nutritious meals to their homes. First Pres volunteers deliver meals on the 1st through the 15th of each month. Could you donate 2 hours of time one day each month to help?
La Crosse Warming Center Meals
La Crosse Warming Center Meals – is an opportunity to support a community homeless shelter. The La Crosse Warming Center’s mission is to work with the greater
La Crosse community to better serve those experiencing homelessness with dignity and respect by providing a safe and warm place for homeless adults. To assist this community program, our teams prepare and deliver a meal one Saturday each month, November through April. Call the church office for more information.
Partnering with The Exchange
Partnering with The Exchange – is new initiative for First Pres is the collaboration with The Exchange. The Exchange works closely with the Collaborative to End Homelessness and local community social service agencies to connect folks in need and transitioning out of homelessness with the items they need to make their new house a real home. The Exchange helps solicit, accept, organize and distribute donations of gently used furniture, kitchen and other household goods. First Pres is providing 2 forms of support: 1) encouraging members who are downsizing to consider making donation of appropriate household goods and 2) providing a team of drivers with pick-up trucks to move donated items to the Exchange.
Global Outreach:
Operation Christmas Child
Every Fall FPC is involved in the international mission work of OCC. We fill shoeboxes with items for children and send the boxes to Samaritan’s Purse to be distributed to children in remote areas of the world who live in poverty and war-torn countries. We collect items from the congregation and have a huge packing party every November. Our Coach House building, located in the parking lot, becomes a shoebox drop-off center for other churches and organizations. Within a week we collect anywhere from 6,000-7,000 shoeboxes and pack them carefully into semi-trucks in the parking lot. Through Samaritan’s Purse these boxes, along with a copy of “The Greatest Gift” book, will be delivered to millions of the poorest and most forgotten children in the world. The book is in the child’s language and children also get to learn more about the Christian faith and receive their own Bible. OCC is a wonderful way to be a missionary and reach the unreached through the simple gift of a shoebox. FPC has been involved with OCC for over 10 years and has seen many hearts touched on both the receiving and giving end of these simple gifts.
Haiti Mission Trips
Our congregation has had an on-going relationship with missions in Haiti. Our earliest trips back in 2003 connected us with Harvest International. We brought medical mission teams to Les Cayes and Bonados for several years. We were already serving there in 2010 when a major earthquake struck, and our medical team was able to provide 
much needed support to the hospital staff in Les Cayes. Two high school teams have been to Camp Mahanaim, started by the Wray Family whose vision is to introduce young people to Christ, with a focus on teamwork and mutual encouragement through sport. We also helped with the Wray’s wedding ministry in which we brought wedding dresses and suits to Haiti, and helped support the marriage of 25 couples who previously had been ostracized for being unwed (but unable to afford the expected Haitian wedding celebration).