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WILLIAMSTOWN — The Global Missions Festival and Expo on Saturday will bring together churches from Parkersburg, Marietta, Belpre and Williamstown to showcase their global outreach efforts and feature a speaker who just returned from Ukraine.

The theme of this year’s event, slated for 5-7:30 p.m. Saturday at Wood County Christian School in Williamstown, is “Let the Earth Hear His Voice.” The event is free and open to the public.

Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist and independent churches will set up booths to showcase various global missions projects.

Some churches support individual missionaries, while others aid organizations involved in evangelism and projects such as disaster relief and other humanitarian efforts. Still other churches send mission teams from here in the Mid-Ohio Valley to countries to build water wells or schools or hold evangelistic outreach meetings in remote parts of the world.

One booth at Saturday’s event will feature a church member just back from speaking to hundreds in Kenya. Another will showcase a worldwide mission to children.

Each booth will provide food for attendees from 5-6 p.m. Then churches will each have a few minutes to tell a story about what God is doing through the missionaries and projects they support.

At 6:45 p.m., the praise band New Creation from Christ United Methodist Church in Parkersburg will lead singing.

The event will culminate with speaker Garland Gould, who has just returned from the Ukraine. Gould is a representative of the Slavic Gospel Association, a 90-year-old mission that trains and supports pastors in Russian-speaking countries. According to a release about the festival, he experienced Russian drones over his head and witnessed some of the ministry the churches are doing in those devastated areas.

Gould reported that the 1,800 evangelical churches which are still meeting have provided 30,000 meals and helped many of their neighbors find safety and refuge in hundreds of towns. They have provided generators for heat and electricity for charging phones and more, as well as medical care and evacuation services for thousands.