Thank you so much for the articles about the 1st Presbyterian Church’s Local Mission Expo. We are very grateful to the 26 charitable agencies that came in and set up their exhibit.

Church members visited the exhibits Saturday morning to see where each could best offer time and skills. It wasn’t a request for dollars but a request for yard work, painting, cleaning and other such contributions from hands-on volunteers.

Seventy people left the exhibits at 10:30 to work on nine projects. One group, supervised by a volunteer professional, completely painted the inside of a seven-room house. Jack Spencer, who oversaw the Local Mission Expo announced that 15,193 volunteer hours were reported by participants during the past year.

Gainesville is fortunate to have a large variety of agencies that are set up to help local residents. A representative of one of the agencies was very complimentary of the church’s effort to focus on local needs as part of its mission work. Articles in The Times about the varied projects of all Gainesville churches also help our community.

Despite all the talk about social media, it’s still The Times newspaper that we look to for official recognition of community efforts and important reports of news.

Alma Bowen
Gainesville