| Pushkin UMC will have heat next winter  ROCKVILLE When Faith UMC members visited their sister church, Gods Inspiration UMC in St. Petersburg, Russia, last August they learned of the plight in another Russian UMC.
Bethany UMC in Pushkin, outside St. Petersburg, had no heat for the upcoming winter months, from late September to May. Public steam was available at the curb, but the $5,000 cost for the connection and radiators was out of the 12-year-old churchs reach. No more. The Faith congregation solicited funds from the community and other churches and recently sent $5,700 through the General Board of Global Ministries to heat the building in next winters zero temperatures, said the Rev. Ken Jones, who has taken volunteers on 10 trips to Russia. Church starts after-school program  WILLIAMSPORT Rehoboth UMC includes a bustling childcare hub that serves as many as 200 children from age 2 through fifth grade. Last fall the church added a new dimension, and challenge, to the center. They started an after-school program for children in grades 6 through 8. It runs year-round.
The program, called Kids for C.H.R.I.S.T., provides a place for middle school students to go who have time before and after school, said Wendi Starlepper, coordinator. In the summer, the program will expand to all day for that age group, she said. The middle-high program started at the request of the parents of younger students who wanted a place for their children when they graduated from the fifth grade, as well as activities for the summer. Having youngsters left on their own all summer while both parents work is not an ideal situation, Starleper told the Hagerstown Morning Herald. Runner raises hope for city of the dead BALTIMORE Warren Wiggins, a member of Sharp Street UMC, has been running 10 to 12 miles a day since 1997 to train for his big run from Los Angeles to New York City in early 2005. The former science teacher is trying to save, or at least restore, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, founded in 1810 as The City of the Dead for Colored People. Since the day he buried his mother in 1983, Wiggins has visited the gravesite every two weeks and kept it looking like the president is lying there. But the surrounding sites, shouldnt be that way, he said of their neglect. The people in Baltimore have been angry, frustrated and sad that the cemetery looks like this. Along the way, Wiggins expects other runners to join him, as he explains the cemeterys significance and seeks support for its restoration. Still serving after 70 years of teaching  CAMP SPRINGS One Sunday when she was 14 years old, Ruth Sellner was asked to teach Sunday School to 4 and 5-year-olds at Bells UMC. Today, she is 85 and still teaching.
Sellner taught when the church was the White Church. She taught in the boom years for the church near Andrews Air Force Base, and in the years of decline, until 2001, when there was only one child in her class. Undaunted, Miss Ruth persisted, and today the class has 15 children. For 27 years, she also headed the childrens choir of more than 30 kindergarten to sixth grade students. Today others teach the Sunday school, and Sellner has become the church historian, preparing to write a major history of Bells UMCs 200 years. Members rally to worthy cause WASHINGTON When Albright Memorial UMC raised nearly $10,000 in 15 minutes to aid the financially strapped Child Development Center, Grace Carter called it Gods gifted miracle. At the churchs Valentines Day breakfast, Carter, coordinator of the older adult ministry, expressed her concern that the center was having difficulty meeting its financial obligations. She backed up her concerns with a pledge for $1,000. Thirteen others followed her example for various amounts. I have not been in the presence of anything happening this quickly and wonderfully in the 41 years that I have been a member of Albright church, she said. (I feel) it is Gods will for this center to be a success, she added. | 
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