Passing on the Goodness.

Last Sunday was a community Mitzvah Day, or Day of Service.  My congregation has done it for many years as part of a MLK weekend observance that includes joint worship with a local Baptist congregation whose minister is a longtime friend of our rabbis and other leaders in our congregation.  I love his sermons.  This year it was moved a week because of when the dates fell; second Friday our service is often led by one of the Sunday school classes, but Mitzvah Day remained on the third Sunday.

Five congregations participated, with services and then a speaker from Hands on Hartford who told how she had gone from homelessness and drug use to clean and college almost-graduate.  It was her first time as one of their speakers, she did wonderfully and I think she appreciated the warm reception.

We had several projects:  making sandwiches for a shelter to hand out (peanut butter and jelly or sunbutter and jelly, made on opposite sides of the hall to avoid contamination); six no-sew fleece blankets; over a hundred toiletries bags containing soap, shampoo (only the first fifty, because we thought we'd have only time or supplies for fifty, but there were generous donations and enthusiastic participants), toothbrush and toothpaste, and new heavyweight socks; and uncounted cards and letters for shut-ins.  I helped to organize and stuff the toiletries bags:

Leftover toiletries and socks went to the shelter, along with the remaining oranges and orange juice from the breakfast buffet.  The remaining bagels went into the congregational freezer for future use.

I took the remaining art supplies to the Free Center, which a friend manages.  I don't need them and they have regular community activities and after school programs, so the paper and markers and stickers and such will go to good use.  Note cards I kept out and am donating them to a caring community project that gives appreciation bags to visitors to a local USO facility.  So the good things just keep flowing through the community.

A friend posted on her blog about her congregation's program reminding people to help each other.  Seems to be a theme - and hopefully not just for this weekend.

In other news, I finished another book, More than Petticoats: Remarkable Connecticut Women, containing brief biographies of many Connecticut women.  I've now donated it to the local Friends of the Library for them to integrate to the collection if wanted, or sell in their fundraisers.