First Methodist Church holds Harvest Festival on Nov. 10

The First United Methodist Church of Olney will hold its annual Harvest Festival on Sunday, Nov. 10 to raise funds for local non-profits and UMC’s missionary work in Africa, Pastor Harrell Braddock said.

The worship service is open to everyone and begins at 10:30 a.m. with lunch featuring chili, beans, cornbread, Frito Pie, desserts and drinks following at 11:30 a.m. The festival also features bake shop items.

The Harvest Festival is the church’s main fundraiser and supports the Young County- Olney Senior Cub Center, the House of Mercy and missionary trips to Sierra Leone and Kenya, Pastor Braddock said.

FUMC of Olney also supports a UMC missionary in Sierra Leone and parishioners have participated in trips to Maua, Kenya where they helped build houses, worked medical missions in the bush to help fight malaria and worked at the Maua Methodist Hospital there, Pastor Braddock said.

“You can build a house for $3,000 there,” Pastor Braddock said. “Once you build a house for someone they become middle class.”

On a separate trip, UMC missionaries brought funding to drill a water well in a remote area where young boys had to haul water every day, he said. Later, Olney parishioner Herb Bernhardt was asked to bless the water well for the community on one of his three trips to Maua, he said.

The Methodist Church organizes similar trips annually although members of the Olney congregation do not attend every year, he said.