No. 16 Vol. 10
www.mypaperonline.com
October 2018
Lutheran Churches Help Via Service Project Day
Volunteers show off the lunch bags they’ve decorated which were filled with non-perishable items and given to the Bridges project to hand out to the homeless.
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By Elsie Walker unday, Sept. 9 was “God’s Work, Our Hands” day for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. On that day, the first of the program year for the denomination, ELCA churches across the country focused on doing a service project for the greater community. Churches in the neighboring areas got involved in a variety of ways, from helping the hungry to helping an animal rescue. In Mt. Olive, the project selected by the Abiding Peace Lutheran Church was to supply sustainable lunches to Bridges. “Bridges Outreach is a Homeless Services program that provides practical assistance to people experiencing homelessness in several cities in North Jersey,” said Serena Rice, the vicar of Abiding Peace Lutheran Church. “We worked with the Summit office, but I believe the lunches were shared with Newark, since that was where the need was at the time.” Rice explained that the idea for the project came from a family of the Islamic Society of North Jersey. Both the church
and the Islamic society are members of the Mt. Olive Interfaith Alliance. That Islamic family joined with the volunteers from the church as 40 people worked to assemble lunches. The vicar noted that the project was partially funded through a grant from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. “We decorated and packed 248 lunch bags, and collected supplies for 52 more,” said Rice. Thus, 300 lunches in all were delivered to Bridges. “It was an intergenerational event, with involvement from pre-schoolers to great-grandparents,” she said. “Participants donated food supplies, decorated bags with encouraging slogans and pictures, helped organize supplies, and filled bags.” Those bags contained non-perishable items such as pre-packed and sealed tuna salad or chicken salad packet, a bottle of water, a fruit cup or apple sauce, a fruit and cereal bar, a snack item (crackers, or nuts, etc.) and a napkin and spoon. continued on page 4