MORGANTOWN — Independence Day is next week and soon fireworks will be lighting up the night skies. But one church will be lighting up lives with their fireworks.
The Morgantown Church of Christ is currently selling fireworks at the Wal-Mart off the Grafton Road (US-119) for a mission trip to Honduras.
Richard Moore, an Elder of the church said all the money raised from the firework sale will go towards the mission trip. Every year the church will take 20 people in March. He said every time they make the trip they’ll build six houses, which costs around $2,000. Their goal is to raise $20,000.
“Every dime that we make either goes to building houses in Honduras, feeding the hungry, going to orphanages and helping them out,” he said.
He also said as soon as the missionaries arrive in Honduras they’ll pack up 200 food bags that will feed a family for a week and go into the community to hand them out.
The money does go into the Honduras trip but Moore said the money goes into what the church calls the “Benevolence Fund.”
“Three or four years ago whenever they had all the devastating floods in southern West Virginia we spent two months in Clendenin rebuilding houses,” he said.
In the past, the church has done service projects to raise the money for their mission trip. This is their first year trying out selling fireworks.
The church does lots of community outreach such as painting houses and other projects around Morgantown.
“I don’t want people to feel like everything that we make goes out of the country necessarily. A lot of it stays here in West Virginia. A lot of it stays here in Morgantown,” said Moore.
All the money raised for the Honduras trip goes into the work fund to help the locals. Each missionary pays their own way for travel and stay. The missionaries stay in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.
“The people that we build houses for – their houses consist of cardboard and plastic,” he said.
Moore also said they’ll generally put a couple beds in the house. One older gentlemen who received a house told the missionaries he had never had a bed before. Another woman thanked the missionaries for building her a dream house. Over the 10 years they’ve built around 60 houses.
“I’ve been blessed and I don’t need it but these people do. They’re so grateful for it,” said Moore.
The fireworks tent is open 9a.m.-9p.m. every day except today it will open at 1p.m. The fundraiser will run till July 6.
