October 15th, 2011
So I was asked to be on the committee for service day. I didn't listen to all of last conference (excuse: I was having Zoey) but I guess there was a challenge for every ward to do a big service project to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the welfare program, and because doing service is, of course, a great thing to do for any reason! So we worked for a couple months getting everything in place for this day to run and to run smoothly! We actually decided to do a massive service day! It included all sorts of things and all sorts of people in a bunch of different locations. We did 3 main things:
#1) We did a service day expo, where a bunch of non-profit organizations came and set up booths at the church for the community to come in and see what they could do for each organization, including donations and a volunteer sign up to help each organization.
#2) We did a donation drive for all sorts of things and to benefit lots of the non profit organizations involved in the expo.
#3) A whole day of service projects, there were 3 different. Raking leaves at 2 different locations for a 2 homes where children are sent when they are taken out of their homes and away from their parents due to abuse and other reasons. Then we redid a ladies room at The Elms nursing home (the one Matt runs) we painted and helped make it real nice for her. (She's a long term resident). And for the rest of the residents we put on a music show/ sing-a-long that featured lots of oldies :) I was solely in charge of this one but also helped out with a bunch of other things.
This thing really turned out to be A TON of work~ It included making logos, flyers, boards to display outside and inside the church, press releases, contacting non-profits to see if they wanted to be a part of the expo, finding service projects for the day of, getting "sign up sheets" around and having enough people sign up and then actually show. Getting all of the materials, all the specifics lined up ahead of time, food for the expo, donation stuff, finding enough donation bins and getting those put out. Set ups, take downs. Setting up a childrens corner and getting people to watch the kids so adults could participate. ... then making something from the "art" the kids made. We really put a lot of effort into this but I think it turned out great!
So here is the result of our efforts:
Our FLYER
Then I only got pics of the service projects cause that is what I was in charge of so that's where I was all day! I didn't even really get to see the expo and see the turn out of the donations, but I heard it was a big success.
So now here are the service projects:
Service Project # 1
Service Project # 2
Service Project # 3
Then at a later date, my friend Jenny (the one who headed this whole shebang) came over to my house and we turned a pile of wet paint, stuck together, children's art pieces and turned them into these to hang at The Elms nursing home! If you would have seen the pile of what looked like "junk" you would be more impressed. It's a good thing that we were planning on cutting a lot of them and making a collage anyways because we could barely salvage small parts of some of them anyways. But I think they turned out pretty good. I was happy with the turnout. And now the residents can know that they are loved by the children at our church :)
Phew! That was a lot to post! But I wanted to document it! :) So there it is. I was happy to help be involved in something that did so much good! Turned out to be a blessing!
