Links

Cleveland Foodbank

The Cleveland Foodbank supplies a majority of the food used in local hot meal sites, shelters, and food pantries. In addition, we provide food to child care centers, group homes, and programs for the elderly.

The Foodbank works closely with other Northeast Ohio hunger relief organizations, providing food and nonfood products to hunger centers administered by the Hunger Network of Greater Cleveland, the Catholic Hunger and Shelter Network, and the Salvation Army, among others.

First Call for Help

First Call of Richland County is a free community service to assist you in finding the help you need for you and your
household.Whether the problem is as simple as not knowing where to call or get an answer to a zoning issue,
or as complex as trying to meet all you monthly bills, First Call - 419-522-4636

Walk in services are available at the Mansfield/Richland County Public Library, 43 W. Third St, Mansfield, OH 44902

Our database of community agencies, organizations and services is continually being updated with contact and eligibility information to assist you.

City of Mansfield

Mansfield, Ohio
Population: 47,821
Located 70 miles N. of Columbus, Ohio and 70 miles S. of Cleveland, Ohio on I-71.

Bible Gateway

Interactive Bible site which allows you to look up Bible passages using various Bible translations.

We hope this will assist you with your faithwalk.

Food Safety

Federal Food Safety weblink. Locate all food recalls and food safety tips on these pages.

WebMD

WebMD on this page you can find answers or ask questions related to your health.

Playground Installation

Playground preparation and Installation Album (Webshots)

Playground Slideshow

Playground Installation Slideshow

Our Daily Bread

About Our Daily Bread



Since it was first published in 1956, Our Daily Bread has become the resource for which RBC Ministries is best known. The daily devotional thoughts published in Our Daily Bread help readers spend time each day in God’s Word.

Our Daily Bread is published and distributed worldwide in more than 40 languages by RBC Ministries offices around the globe. RBC Ministries also produces a variety of other Bible resources, which are available for the asking. RBC Ministries is not funded or endowed by any group or denomination, many people, making even the smallest of donations, enable RBC Ministries to reach others with the life-changing wisdom of the Bible.

Our Daily Bread radio is a daily audio program that features insights from the pages of Our Daily Bread. Each daily thought is designed to draw the listener into a closer relationship with Jesus Christ and to evoke responses of worship, love, trust and obedience.

Today, Our Daily Bread is distributed via print, large-print, radio, podcast, email, rss and mobile. For social networking users, find Our Daily Bread on Twitter and Facebook.

Playground Completion

Playground Completion

Christmas Season 2011

Mt. Hermon enjoying the Christmas season 2011

Angel Tree

Where it All Began


Six million. That’s the cumulative number of prisoners’ children served by Angel Tree® in the U.S. over the past 29 years.



And an ex-prisoner started it all.

“I am both awed and humbled to have been a part of something so enormously effective,” says Mary Kay Beard. “Being there at the beginning—I consider it one of the highest privileges of my life.”


Mary Kay was a safecracker, a bank robber, and one of America’s Most Wanted. Arrested in June of 1972, she quickly collected 11 federal indictments and 35 charges against her. But her 180-year sentence turned into a six-year sentence—during which time she asked God to change her hardened heart.



On the three Christmases that she spent at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Alabama, local church groups brought the inmates gifts of toothpaste and soap. Intrigued, Mary Kay watched as her fellow prisoners wrapped up the small gifts and gave them to their children at the Christmas visit.



“Most children wouldn’t think much of such small gifts, but in prison there was such joy on their faces!” says Mary Kay. “It didn’t really matter to them what they got; it was from Mama.”



Remembering the Children
After being paroled, Mary Kay accepted Prison Fellowship’s challenge to become their first Alabama State Director in 1982. One of her assignments was to create a Christmas project for prisoners. At one of her speaking engagements, a conversation with an ex-prisoner’s daughter solidified the project’s focus.



“What about the inmate’s kids?” the woman asked. “They are the real victims.”



Mary Kay recalled the toiletries that prisoners gave their children on Christmas. So she and a crew of volunteers began creating a program to provide real gifts for prisoners’ children.



Their plan was to erect a Christmas tree at Birmingham’s Brookwood Mall, encouraging shoppers to buy presents for specific children. Then someone suggested writing the children’s names on paper ornaments shaped like angels—creating an “Angel Tree”!



So Mary Kay helped cut out 100 paper-angel ornaments and then visited prisoners to invite them to sign up their children.



“God never wastes anything,” Mary Kay says. “He used my own criminal past to give me credibility in their eyes. And they trusted us.”



Mary Kay called the caretakers of the children and asked what they wanted for Christmas. Then, she wrote each child’s name and the “gift wishes” on an angel ornament.



On the day after Thanksgiving—the busiest retail day of the year—an Angel Tree greeted shoppers at the top of the mall’s escalator. An advertisement in the Birmingham News had notified readers of the project. Many of the store owners agreed to offer a 10-percent discount to shoppers who bought their Angel Tree gifts there.



The response was overwhelming. That weekend, shoppers took all 100 angels to buy gifts. So Mary Kay visited more prisons, called more caretakers, and put more angels on the tree.



She and the volunteers wrapped gifts and made sure they would get to the right child. Then Mary Kay called the caregivers of the prisoners’ children to pick up the presents. She mobilized the Gideons and the Birmingham News deliverers to take gifts to children who lived far away.



That year 556 children received gifts—but the effects spread even farther. “In January, all of my Bible study groups at that prison doubled or tripled,” said Mary Kay. “The newcomers were the inmates whose children had received gifts.”



The next year, Angel Tree branched out to 12 states and soon became a church-based program. Now—as PF’s most popular program—it reaches prisoners’ children not only throughout the U.S. but in 90 other countries as well.

Not Just for Christmas Anymore
Angel Tree now encourages and equips churches to reach out to prisoners’ children and their caregivers year-round—helping to restore family bonds and break the generational cycle of crime.



More and more churches now welcome prisoners’ families into their existing church services and ministries. And many provide other special outreaches, such as sending the children to Christian summer camps and matching the children with caring adult mentors.



I just can't hardly describe how joyful it feels to reach out to the families especially this time of year during what could be an otherwise possibly difficult time of year!
Abbey

National Signing Day - Terrell Dorsey

Our own Terrell Dorsey received a full football scholarship to Grand Valley State University.