WISCONSIN DELLS, Wisc. – For the past three years, the First Baptist Church of Trenton, Mo., has sent a mission team of roughly 20 people to partner with Rock of Hope Church here.
The Missouri Baptist Convention is currently engaged in a partnership with the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention.
On July 10-14, a mission team from the Missouri church once again traveled to the area and reached out to the Wisconsin Dells community.
“They helped us meet neighbors in the community through our Neighborhood Impact Ministry,” said Aaron Ramquist, pastor and church planter at the Rock of Hope Church here.
Through the Neighborhood Impact Ministry, he explained, the Rock of Hope Church finds neighbors who need help doing work on their homes, whether they simply can’t do the work or don’t have funds for it.
“We’ve helped,” he added, “with minor concrete repair, handicap railing install, gutters, roofing repair, door repair, painting, garbage removal, mowing, weeding, fence construction, planting gardens and many other types of landscape and construction work.”
This year, with help from First Baptist Church, Trenton, Mo., they reached out to nine different families in the neighborhood, including six whom the church hadn’t connected with before.
“We also repaired a swing set for an apartment complex that previously decided not to repair,” Ramquist said. “While repairing the set, we met many kids from the complex who were excited to use it. Two of the mothers even let us pick up their boys for a block party event in a different part of the Dells.”
The Wisconsin church and Missouri mission team also put on a community bonfire, offering free smores, popcorn and sno-cones to participants. Then they organized a block party at a local baseball field. During the evening of games, food and face-painting, the church connected with 20 new people, who they hadn’t met before.
The mission team also invited community members to the church and handed out information about the church.