Sunday School 2025 Grassroots Lenten Drive

Once again, the Sunday School is collecting items to help fill the current pantry needs at the Grassroots Crisis Center. The Grassroots organization provides free 24-hour crisis intervention, mental health, substance use disorder, housing support, and suicide prevention services in Howard County and Central Maryland. 

There will be a box for donations in the Narthex through Sunday, April 6th. Please see the list below for needed items. If you would like to donate a gift card to Wal-Mart or Giant instead, please give directly to Kate Richer. We will either donate the gift cards to the shelter for their use, or we will use the gift cards to shop for needed items to donate. 

If you have any questions, please contact Kate at katericher77@gmail.com. 

Thank you so much for your support!

Grassroots Crisis Center Pantry Needed Items :

• Shampoo/Conditioner (full size)
• Canned Tuna and Chicken
• Tuna to-go snack kits
• Chef Boyardee meals
• Hormel Compleats style meals
• Cup of Noodles
• Soups (Chunky, Chicken Noodle, Progresso)
• Crackers (Ritz, Graham)
• Individual-sized bags of chips/pretzels/snacks/fish crackers
• Juice Boxes
• Cereal (full size boxes)
• Pop Tarts

Sunday School will be starting up for the 2024-2025 school year on Sunday, September 8. We will hold classes on Sundays following Liturgy during coffee hour. 

If you have not previously registered your children, please fill out the following form : https://form.jotform.com/212075889043157

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Kate Richer at sundayschool@stmatthewoca.org.

The Sunday School would like to thank the Parish for your generosity for our 2024 Lenten Outreach Drive for Grassroots. For this drive, the Sunday School children decorated fliers, made announcements to the Parish, helped to buy items with their families, and helped to deliver the donations. 

In total, we were able to deliver around $1200 worth of needed items to the Grassroots shelter/crisis center! The things we were able to bring included :

• 130 microwavable canned/packaged meals (Hormel Compleats, Easy Mac, Chef Boyardee, and similar)
• 12 packs/boxes of diapers in a variety of sizes (that's over 1,000 diapers!)
• 30 packs of wipes
• 3 tubs of baby formula
• 6 packs of laundry detergent pods (that's 224 pods)
• 162 juice boxes
• 26 tubes of toothpaste
• 16 sticks of deodorant
• 6 bottles of shampoo
• 6 bottles of conditioner
• 4 bottles of 2 in 1 shampoo/conditioner
• 10 bottles of body wash
• 23 razors
• 174 bottles of water

Thank you to everyone who helped to make this drive a success!

SUNDAY SCHOOL RECENT EVENTS

Spring 2023 - The Sunday School Completed there Lenten Project for Grass Roots Crisis Intervention Center - highlights can be found in Parish Events.

Winter 2022 - St Matthew Sunday School had a busy December!

The St Nicholas Day celebration on December 3rd was a wonderful event. Check out the photo gallery under Parish Events.

The Annual Nativity Pageant was held on Dec 11th. You can view the video here.

Sunday School meets after Divine Liturgy each Sunday from September through May and is open to all children – visitors are most welcome!

• Classes for students from Pre-K through High School
• Open Door Policy – parents are always welcome in the classroom
• Subjects include Orthodox Faith, Holy Scriptures, and history of the Orthodox Church

Past activities and outreach include:

• IOCC disaster relief efforts
• Food package preparation for area nursing homes
• Coat collections for local charities
• Lenten Icon painting
• Lazarus Saturday activities and Confession class
• Coffee Hour assistance
• St. Thomas Sunday egg hunt
• Annual Feast Day presentations

For more information contact sundayschool@stmatthewoca.org