Oasis Church Saw The Need And Answered

Temperatures in Grant County were 100 plus just this past week - tough for those who work out in it day after day. One of those professions to brave the weather, is United States Mail carriers.

Locally, mail carriers were blessed recently with a gift which has made their job not quite as "hot to handle".

"We went in and spent money to outfit all of their LLVs with cooled seats," said Oasis Church Lead Pastor Andy McMillan. "The LLV is not the cars people drive of their own for the rural routes, because those have air conditioning. The LLVs are the government trucks people are used to seeing, which don't have air conditioning."

Grumman Long Life Vehicles (LLVs) are  described as "American light transport truck models."

A familiar sight throughout the country, this type of truck was designed specifically as a mail truck for the United States Post Office and was first used in 1986.

McMillan said Oasis church members heard their was a need locally to provide some relief for the mail carriers.

"United States Postal Service workers die every year from heat stroke or exhaustion. We said we are going to help take care of that, because these people are part of our community."

According to McMillan, the post office has three LLVs in use here. The need to address the heat was brought to their attention in June, and by July, the seats were presented to the local post office carriers. But the seats wasn't all they provided them.

"We bought cooled seats, 64 ounce containers that are supposed to hold ice for 24 hours, a fan for their vehicles and electrical adapters to hook all of that up together in their LLV," McMillan said. "We saw the need and said it's not okay that we are putting people in a scenario like that which is so unhealthy. We wanted to help."

McMillan said the seats came in a four-pack.

"So we did end up giving one to a rural carrier that was an extra one," he said.

Cost for the help was minimal.

"The crazy part is that it cost around $600 to equip the LLVs," said McMillan.

Stories about the weather mail carriers were faced with and then learning from news articles that two postal workers had actually died in June in the United States, spurred on the local church's desire to reach out.

"We said we have to figure something out to help these guys," McMillan said. "Some people might say it's only two lives our of how many, but it is still two people. Percentages are irrelevant when we are talking about lives. If we can care for people in a basic way, by making sure they have cold water to drink and stay cooler in body temperature, and that only costs us a total of $600 - that is money well spent. I think that's also money that honors the Lord."

Attempts to get comment from the local post office were unsuccessful as of press time; however, McMillan said the carriers were appreciative of what they did.

"They were shocked, because most people who work in government entities get people's complaints more than they get thank yous," McMillan said. "They said it was a dramatic change in how their day was and it kept them a lot cooler, so it was effective."

Taking care of this need, goes along with the philosophy of the Oasis church and other needs they address locally.

"One of our key values for the church is we believe in being a significant part of the community," McMillan said.  "We partner with Convoy of Hope annually and give away between $35,000 and $50,000 every year in food and hygiene products. Sometimes we send them to lower income communities and sometimes we have people come to the church and get it. We genuinely want to be a community of faith that makes a deep impact on the community we are in."

Convoy of Hope allows those in partnership with them to obtain these products at a significant discount.

"That discount allows us to distribute it," McMillan said. "It's connected to relief organizations, so when they are collecting and their stuff gets near expiration they send it to rural communities -  it's called a rural compassion project. We partner with them. There are 10 other churches in western Kansas who partner with them as well.  We get an 18-wheeler that comes and we distribute the products. Every church distributes differently and they are all Assembly of God churches, so it's a process. When people give to our church specifically in the area of like local missions, we are able to get a significant return on money earmarked for outreach because of systems like that."

According to McMillan, they have been able to serve families in this community with hygiene and food products in the equivalent of $30,000 to $35,000 already this year.

"And we will do it again," he said. "We are very disciplined so when our benevolence budget is done, that's all we can do. Part of our philosophy of generosity is when our congregation is generous, we can be generous. We don't go to our church and say, 'hey, we saw this need, can you give to it ?' We say because of your generosity we were able to meet this need."

McMillan says they have had members who have said they want to give to a certain need and that is okay as well.

"Or, we have had members who say they heard we are giving to a specific need and they want to partner with us,  but in general that is how we approach generosity is not to ask them to give to anything specific," he said. 

Some of the other needs the church has met include taking products to first responders such as nurse's stations, and the police department. They have also gone to the schools.

"We have been to every school in our town more than once," McMillan said. "I will have been here four years in November and we've done that multiple times."

They provide them with bottles of water, snacks,  and sometimes more.

"A year ago, I had a couple approach me and say one of the biggest loop holes in the community is we've got  lunches for those under the poverty line in the summer and during school, but nothing during spring breaks," McMillan said. "Because we had someone passionate about that, we took time and resources to set up our lobby of our church to feed kids Monday through Friday between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., during spring break. That's who we want to be. We really do believe a church is only as effective as  its willingness to care for the community it is placed in. The way we say it in our church is we believe we are uniquely called to reach our world and our world for Oasis is Southwest Kansas."