Bishop Ntambo Nkulu and NAUMS President Art Collins
NAUMS offered a Scouting Ministries Sunday patch this year to raise money for our Bible Project. We really didn't know how many we could sell the first year, so we swallowed hard and ordered 4,000. The price breaks for ordering in quantity made 4,000 as cheap as 1,500 -- and we knew we could sell 1,500. So we trusted God and the people responded enthusiastically, and we sold almost 2,800 patches this first year. Wow!
At the same time as we stepped out in faith, we also realized we'd probably have patches left over, and maybe a lot of them. Having dated patches sit around in inventory after the sale is always a downer. So we decided to help out some friends in the UM Scouting Ministry community.
Scouting is very big in The UMC in Africa. And Bishop Ntambo Nkulu of the North Katanga episcopal area, is very high on Scouting. The Indiana Conference (including the Pathfinder Chapter of NAUMS) is planning on leading a big Church Scouting mission trip to the Dem. Rep. of the Congo next year. We are traveling at Bishop Ntambo's invitation. So the NAUMS Board of Directors offered the leftover patches to the Scouts of the North Katanga Annual Conference.
Today, President Art Collins of NAUMS met with Bishop Ntambo and presented him with 1,200 2012 Scouting Ministry Sunday patches. The bishop will see that these are distributed to pastors at the July meeting of the North Katanga Conference, so that their churches can celebrate Scout Sunday in the second half of 2012.