John Purrington, Senior Pastor, Ringgold United Methodist Church (RUMC) announced that RUMC and the RUMC Riders would be hosting, “A Benefit Ride for Nourishing Children in Catoosa (NCIC) and Blessing of the Bikes.
The Benefit Ride and Bike Blessing will be held on Saturday, April 13 at the Ringgold United Methodist Church (RUMC), 7484 Nashville Street, Ringgold, GA. Registration for the ride starts at 10 a.m. The ride will leave the RUMC parking lot at 11 a.m.
for a ride over Dug Gap Mountain in Dalton and beyond. The ride will return back to RUMC at 12 p.m. where Rev John Purrington, RUMC will conduct a group Blessing. Following the group blessing, members of the Dalton and Lafayette chapters of the Christian Motorcycle Association (CMA) will conduct individual blessings on request. Music and a free lunch will be provided following the group blessing.
Pastor Purrington said, “This is the fifth year we have provided this service to bikers in our community and is something I look forward to every year. In addition to the Blessing of the Bikes, this year, we are going to add a charity ride to benefit Nourishing Children in Catoosa (NCIC). NCIC was started by two members of our church, Nan and Theo Pinkston.”
“51.2 % of the school children in Catoosa County, per the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Data Center are on free or reduced meals. Often the only meals these children get every day are the meals they receive at school. But what do they do on the weekend?” said Theo Pinkston, co-founder NCIC.
Nan Pinkston, co-founder, NCIC added, “We felt these children needed some food to help them through the weekend. So we put a group together from RUMC and throughout the community to pack and provide snack sacks to these children as they left school on Friday for the weekend. We started out providing 300 snack sacks and we are now up to over 1000 in six schools. During the 2011-2012 school year we distributed over 30,000 sacks”, Ms. Pinkston added