Trinity Church in Papillion, Nebraska, has been a longtime partner of The Raining Season. Their church community has supported The Raining Season through sponsorship, fundraising, prayer, and traveling since 2010.
Trinity Church connected with The Raining Season after participating in a packing event for Kids Against Hunger, where they packed 25,000 meals. Not long after the Kids Against Hunger event, founder Erica Rust reached out to the church to see if TRS could travel from Tennessee to Nebraska to personally say thank you to the church and share more about The Raining Season.
Erica visited the church and shared about The Raining Season’s work and ministry in Sierra Leone. At the time, TRS had just taken in around forty new kids after a ferry accident left many children from the Shenge village as orphans. The number of children TRS was caring for went from forty to eighty overnight. Trinity began sponsoring many of those children and continues to do so today.
Erica’s visit to Trinity in 2010 became the first of many visits. Erica, as well as her husband Jason, have visited on multiple occasions. In 2017, Jason was able to share about The Roots Project that was just launching at that time. Our former Executive Director, Francis Pyle, also visited the church sharing updates on The Raining Season and Sierra Leone.
On February 13th, co-founder Jason Rust and Executive Director Lori Pyle visited Trinity Church to share not only the heart of The Raining Season but also share an update on The Raining Season. They shared updates on The Roots Project, our special needs apartment, The Hope Room, and the impact your support has on our kids.
Because of COVID, it has been a very difficult two years for The Raining Season, our kids, and our staff. Lori shared how much the kids and staff missed teams traveling for the past two years. Travelers not only bring supplies and do work around the center, but they also spend time getting to know the kids and staff. “We are truly a family. There’s a connection there. It’s not just like we provide a donation. We are a family. So, it’s been a huge impact on them to not have teams traveling.”
While sharing an update, Jason also thanked Trinity Church for its support and impact over the years. “Trinity is not just a sponsor of The Raining Season - it is part of The Raining Season. We are one. In West Africa we say fambul, which means family, and we are one. There were times around 2015 when if it wasn’t for this church standing by us in a very difficult time during Ebola, we might not be here today.”
The Raining Season continues to grow and envision what its future looks like. Lori shared, “We take good care of our kids. They are happy. We take care of their medical care, their food, their schooling, their clothing, and all of that. But the vision that we have is that we are going to do this with excellence, and so, there is still more work that needs to be done. It is our heart to raise kids up in that country to be the next business leaders - to be the next lawyers and doctors and to be able to support the community around us.”
It was an honor for Jason and Lori to travel to Trinity Church and share about The Raining Season. We are grateful that we have six new sponsors and many more interested in sponsoring that our sponsorship coordinator is working to connect with. If you would like to view Lori and Jason sharing with Trinity Church in its entirety, you can view it HERE.
A big thank you to Trinity Church for being a longtime partner and supporter of The Raining Season. Thank you for sponsoring, traveling, and supporting our mission. As Jason shared, when you link arms with TRS, you become part of our family.
Many blessings,
The Raining Season