Mar 15, 2019 3 min read

BENTLEYVILLE – Members of the Washington District of the United Methodist Women of the United Methodist Church are planning a special anniversary celebration.

The event, scheduled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at the Bentleyville United Methodist Church, will honor the 150th anniversary of the organization, founded by eight women in Boston on March 23, 1869. Since then, membership in the largest faith-based organization of women in the world has grown to over 800,000.

The group will perform a skit depicting the women who first started the organization and will hear from speaker Diane Miller, a past conference UMW president from the North Hills.

“Her topic will focus on the past, present and future of our organization,” said Barbara Turner, vice-president of the Washington District of the UMW, which encompasses Washington and Fayette counties as well as parts of the Mon Valley. “Because the celebration is a birthday party, we’ll have a cake and balloons along with lunch, the skit and the talk.”

Turner, who’s been a UMW member for 20 years, said the division has three meetings throughout the year at one of the division’s 43 churches on a rotating basis. The Bentleyville church was chosen to hold the celebration, because it happened to be its turn to hold the quarterly meeting.

The division, which has about 330 members, also schedules an annual mission trip where they do hands-on work on a special project. Last year, the division went to the Eastbrook Mission Barn in New Castle where they helped put together hygiene and school kits for the needy. On Aug. 3, the division is planning a trip to the House of the Carpenter on Wheeling Island in West Virginia to help with its mission to serve the people of the Upper Ohio Valley.

The various churches in the district also hold monthly UMW meetings for their members. Turner’s church for instance, the United Methodist Church of California, holds its meeting at 11:30 a.m. the second

Tuesday of each month with guest speakers, a devotional service and lunch.

“The UMW places an emphasis on helping women, children and youth,” Turner said. “We collect items for kids such as hygiene kits filled with toothpaste, a toothbrush, a hand towel and other hygiene items. We also donate flood relief buckets filled with rubber gloves and disinfectants to those who’ve experience a devastating flood, and our members build ramps for the disabled at their homes for those unable to do have one built themselves.”

The Washington District of the UMW is part of the Western Pennsylvania Conference, which takes in the area of the state from the West Virginia and Ohio Lines to Erie and east to around Johnstown. Officials at the church, district and conference levels are elected by votes of the members. Every four years, the UMW hold a worldwide conference with attendees from as far away as Fiji, Korea and India. Worldwide, the United Methodist Church and UMW are in 125 countries.

Two years ago the national office of the UMW in New York initiated a Legacy Fund, intended to see the organization through the next 150 years.

“All the money the UMW collects goes to our mission, and we decided how to disburse it,” Turner said. “To become a member, you don’t have to be a Methodist, just some one who believes in our mission.”

Saturday’s celebration is open to the public. For more information, call Turner at 412-760-2988.