Take a seat at Soul Table
The Soul Table is a ministry of First United Methodist Church of Murphy and facilitated by the Mission Team, along with donations and volunteer support from the congregation. The program started out as a free lunch once a month but has expanded to become much more.
We are about to celebrate our one-year anniversary and expand to twice a month – first and third Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. We have also been able to connect with our neighbors and learn more about them, their wishes and needs.
Because of the bigger scope of Soul Table, we are asking for businesses, groups and individuals to consider becoming a partner. Some of the options for partnering include:
- Present the entire meal experience (provide the food, cook, serve and clean up in our fellowship hall).
- Serve, visit with our neighbors and help clean up.
- Provide funds for a meal. Each meal costs up to $100, but we try to keep it as economical as possible. No food goes to waste. It is shared with the food bank, homeless shelter and taken home by our guests.
- Bring and share information about services and resources you might provide to the community. Eat and talk with our neighbors and learn more about them.
- Any combination of the above and/or your own creative ideas.
In addition, we will be offering a special Thanksgiving and Christmas meal this year. Anyone in the community is welcome to attend.
We are finding that loneliness is a huge problem in our area, and people need to be with others. Soul Table offers that opportunity. We hope that you will consider joining this effort, even if you just come to eat.
Contact us if you need more information or would like to partner in some way.
First United Methodist Church Mission Team, Murphy
Cobby Barfield is the contact for the Church Mission Team. Email him at cobbyb@yahoo.com or call 828-557-9408.
Book should be removed
Recently I requested that the Nantahala Regional Library remove two books on child transgenderism placed in the young readers and teenage section.
These books are the story of a boy named Jazz. His parents groomed him as a girl, wearing girl’s clothing from the age of 16 months. This child has grown to be an adult and is suffering depression and anxiety attacks after four surgeries to supposedly change his genitals and given puberty blockers and hormone therapy. He’s gained 98 pounds and states he doesn’t know who he is anymore. Jazz stated, as a trans woman, that “she” is a lesbian, attracted to women and not men.
Jazz is not a lesbian. He’s a biological man who is attracted to women as God intended. He’s been surgically destroyed, suffering the results of trusting his parents and surgeons.
I shared numerous Jazz videos as evidence to the board, but they refused to remove these destructive and deceptive books.
On Thursday, Aug. 17, at 2:30 p.m., I and several pastors are going to Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville to speak to the library board to again request they remove these harmful books, protecting our children.
The bottom line is this – either God created mankind and He doesn’t make gender mistakes, or there is no God and mankind can determine their sexual identity.
I’m asking Christian parents, especially pastors and elders, to come and take a stand for our Creator God, requesting that the board remove these insidious books. If a Christian isn’t willing to stand for the truth of God’s word, that Jesus is the Creator God, and protect these children against the LBGT agenda, then what will you stand for?
This is a spiritual war of good against evil. God is watching. Remember, through repentance, Nineveh was spared judgment.
Mary Mason, Murphy
My prediction on EVs, Earth
The fact that millions of EVs are being sold globally allows me to more comfortably pump and burn gas, knowing that the petroleum age is about to expire.
This summer has contained the hottest day/month/year on Earth. It’s obvious, whenever each of the Earth’s 8 billion people fire up an ICE engine, they’re directly contributing to global warming. There’s an increasingly undeniable connection between overpopulation and global warming.
Predicting our global future may be unpleasant.
If President Donald Trump gets re-elected, he’ll take the oath in his jail cell, with a get-out-of-jail-free card stuck in the Bible.
If the temperature keeps rising a few more degrees, the ice caps will melt, the oceans will rise more than a foot, and massive disruptions will occur.
The Russian-Ukrainian war will turn nuclear.
As they’re discovering around Chernobyl, radiation will disappear much more rapidly than predicted; and after a couple hundred years, the one-in-10 humans remaining will have another chance at establishing global harmony.
The 90 percent gone would leave only 800 million humans on Earth to carry on.
Harry Holdorf, Brasstown
Drug-free inspiration
I’m writing because Amanda Armstrong needs a lot of praise for the awesome work she has done for a lot of families and loved ones in our community since she went to Asheville, got her life together and broke free from the bondage of addiction. Now she is a leader in the sober living community.
There are a few people from Cherokee County who have totally changed their life and are free from addiction – Evan Mashburn, Andrew Bennett and Franny Gibson. They have jobs, licenses, vehicles or working on getting vehicles. The main thing is they are clean and living an awesome life, with no bondages to their old lifestyle or thoughts of it.
Community friends ,if you are struggling and really want help and change, reach out to Amanda and The Oxford House and first at Blue Ridge programs. They will change your life if you really want it. Every step they take is always in the right direction.
Amanda has inspired a lot of people in our county. Thank you, and God bless.
Dustin Pressley, Spruce Pine
Protect our ‘soundscape’
Lately, it sounds as if our once peaceful, considerate and neighborly Murphy is becoming infected with a more urban-like impatience and propensity for automotive horn blowing.
Full disclosure: I am a full-time resident, although my roots here do not reach back to 1863.
At times, the auditory offenders are wearing license plates from that place south of Georgia, increasingly and disturbingly so, the offenders sport N.C. plates and from the vehicle types and descriptions, are not new arrivals.
Perhaps we should remember that there are lots of senior drivers here, many with diminished time, speed, distance perceptions and since there are no real public transportation options, these folks must drive.
Others, may be visitors, as they will be in autumn leaf season and, like it or not, they advance our local economy.
Collectively, we can all contribute to “keeping the peace” and trying to be a bit more patient, while protecting the “soundscape,” which is an important part of the natural beauty that we all enjoy.
Henry Saludes Murphy