File Photo Ohio Valley residents participate in a previous Stuff the Bus event at Bethlehem Apostolic Temple. This year’s Stuff the Bus is scheduled for Saturday, with the collected school supplies going to students in need.

Ohio Valley residents are invited Saturday to help Bethlehem Apostolic Temple get students in need ready for the school year.

The church will hold its annual “Stuff the Bus” event from 10 a.m.-noon Saturday at the church’s parking lot at 330 Main St. in Wheeling. Volunteers will be on hand collecting school supplies that will be handed out to students Saturday, Aug. 16 at 10 a.m. at the North Wheeling Dream Center at 407 Main Street.

“We’re still grateful for the opportunity to do this for the 35th year,” said Bishop Darrell Cummings, lead pastor of Bethlehem Apostolic Temple.

The church is looking for a wide array of school items as donations – notebooks, backpacks, pens, pencils, calculators, dry erase markers, scissors, glue, protractors, crayons, colored pencils, markers, paper, binders and more. The church will also accept monetary donations to help purchase those supplies.

Those items will go to students Aug. 16 at the Dream Center, where the church hopes to help 500 students. But Cummings said that event will include much more than handing out backpacks.

The church also will provide new and used clothes, and a week’s worth of food for each family, he said. The help doesn’t end there, Cummings added.

The church’s “Adopt A Student” program lasts the entire school year, he said. If a student runs out of supplies, he or she can return to Bethlehem Apostolic Temple for more. As long as funds remain, the church also helps families with utility bills, rent and food to make sure the students remain in school.

“We try to help meet any of their needs,” Cummings said.

Cummings said he loves hearing about the success stories that come with the program, how students who have been helped in the past have gone on to success and stability.

“One of the members of the (Ohio County) sheriff’s department said he remembers us helping him as a child,” Cummings said. “We had some people who came in when they moved into the area and didn’t have a job. Now they’re a store manager.

“I hope we have a legacy that we’ve been helping people for almost four decades,” he said.

For more information on the “Stuff the Bus” event and the school supply giveaway, call the church at 304-233-8899 or visit bethlehemapostolictemple.org.