Help Other People Day found the church full of enthusiastic people, working together to serve others!
Two teams braved the 30-degree temperatures to go out and help with some fall clean-up projects.
- One team went to the Boise Rescue Mission’s The Next Step facility on Curtis Road and raked a lot of leaves. They filled the available dumpster! This is a return visit for us and we’re happy to be help out this facility, a Transitional Christian Living Community that will significantly expand their capacity to help people take an intermediate step out of emergency shelters toward independent living.
- Another team went across the road to our neighbors, the Sparrow’s, and cut down two trees and stacked the wood, pulled weeds, and spread gravel to smooth out their driveway.
The church hummed with activity as people worked on a variety of projects:
- An assembly line of people built 100 birthday party-in-a-box boxes! They did everything from putting the boxes together, to filling them with the party supplies, to wrapping them in cheery birthday paper. The boxes include all that’s needed to throw a kid’s birthday party, from cake mix and frosting, to birthday plates, napkins, cups, and candles, to decorations – birthday banner, crepe paper, and balloons. Plus, a game and book in each box! These boxes are going to St. Vincent de Paul’s food pantry to be given to families who need help throwing a party for their child. Thanks to Joy Bielenberg for coming up with this fun idea!
- A team of sewers cut out and sewed almost 40 pillowcases for St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital. They’re given to kids in the hospital so they have something more fun than hospital-grade pillowcases. The hospital told us Halloween and Christmas pillowcases are the favorite choice of kids so the team used a variety of fabrics to make bright and cheery pillowcases for these two holidays!
- The church smelled absolutely delicious as the baking team went to work in the kitchen, making pumpkin muffins, chocolate chip bars, rice Krispie treats, and no bake cookies. They also made jars of Russian tea and decorated them with fun Halloween fabric from the pillowcases. Then they boxed up the goodies for delivery to the three nearby fire stations – station #15 in Harris Ranch, station #12 above Columbia Village, and station #3 on Gekeler Lane – and to some of our friends and members at home and in care centers.
- We also decorated cards for all these folks, letting them know we’re thinking of them. Giant cards were made for the fire stations and everyone signed them and added messages of thanks.
- And we made colorful fall flower bouquets from tissue paper to go to our friends at home and in care centers.
Outside the church, the boy scout troop who meets here at the church came to help us out. They demolished an old unused shed on the playground and hauled everything away. We appreciate their taking on this project!
And one project got completed before HOP Day, building a ramp at the home of one of our members to help her get in and out of the house more easily.
We’d also planned to send a team to the Diaper Bank, but they regretfully let us know they didn’t get a large enough supply of the diapers that week so we will help them out another time.
At the end of the morning, we joined together for a light lunch and time to share our morning experiences.
Many, many thanks to everyone who made this HOP Day so successful. We appreciate the 50+ people who shared their time and talents on Saturday, and for the many more who donated a mountain of supplies for the birthday boxes. And thanks to LWML and Thrivent for monetary donations that helped make the day possible.
We’d love to hear your feedback about HOP Day and other opportunities we can take on as a church. Please contact the Church Office to share suggestions about future HOP Days and other community activities.