Women of the ELCA
If you are a woman and a member of Brandon Lutheran church you are a member of WELCA too! Contact the office to get a WELCA Handbook for more specific information on our many ministry activities.
2024 Officers:
President - Lorraine Osheim
Vice President – Marilyn Abraham
Secretary – MarDee Dahlin
Treasurer – Laurie Johnson
Director of Justice – Arda Oliver
Director of Discipleship – Deb Klein
Director of Stewardship – Marlys Byre
Work Groups
All the women of the church are divided up into 3 Work Units. These units are called upon occasionally to help provide food and workers for funerals or other special occasions. You may only get called once or twice a year – depending on the need. This way all women have a chance to serve and the more active circle members don’t get overloaded with the work load.
September Highlights for WELCA
LWR School Kits
Beginning in May, our WELCA group will be collecting items for our School Kits for Lutheran World Relief (LWR). In the fall, we will have some of our youth put our kits together, and these kits will be sent to Minneapolis for LWR.
These summer months are the best times to purchase many of these items on sale! Please see the lists posted to know what items we can use. We have bags, but need unsharpened pencils, 16 or 24 pack of crayons, pens, rulers, pencil sharpeners, 2 ½ inch eraser2, 70 sheet notebooks, and blunt tip scissors. Bring your items to the drop off table in the Narthex of BLC.
Together, we can make life a little easier for many children and their families who are in need. Let’s see how many kits we can create this year!
Heritage Festival
Our Heritage Festival will be Sunday, October 20 so mark you calendar! This year we will be making Rosettes and Krumkaka at church on October 14 at 10:00 AM, and sweet breads on October 18. We’d love to have volunteers to help us create these goodies for the Bake Sale. If you are talented and would like to share your crafts for the Craft sale or bake sale, we’d love to have you volunteer, also! It would be wonderful to have a variety of items to sell at the Heritage Festival. Most importantly, sign-up in October to volunteer making meatballs and other foods, decorating and setting up, helping serve the food, making desserts, clean up, dishwashing, and fellowship! Bring your family and friends to this WELCA fundraiser event on Sunday, Oct. 20th!
Upcoming Events:
September 7: 10:00 AM Faithful Greetings downstairs
September 9: 10:30 AM Executive Board Meeting
September 9: 1:00 PM Freezer Ministries
September 16: 9:30 AM Kitchen Clean Up
September 20 & 21: Circles Meet
Fundraisers help support our Benevolent Budget. Some of the Groups/ Ministres WELCA support are:
Local- within our congregation
- Bible campers
- BLC Sunday School
- Vacation Bible School
- Noah’s Ark Preschool
- BLC Debt Retirement Fund
Community Giving - (Outside our congregation)
- Lutheran Social Services
- Church on the Street, SIoux Falls
- Bethany Meadows
- Noah's Ark Preschool Scholarships
- Lutheran World Relief
- Lutherans Outdoors in SD and Shetek Lutheran Ministry
- Student Ministry Programs at SDSU, USD, Augustana
- Family Connection
- St Dysmas Prison Ministry
- Brandon Valley Food Pantry