TOO MUCH HAPPENING
Wow, it has been a while since I wrote, not because nothing is happening but so much is that I have hardly had time to think about it, much less write about it.
Last Weekend was Presbytery in Fairfield, this weekend we will travel to Stamford where my Niece Nicole recently moved, my sister Nancy and her husband will be visiting and we will all do lunch together.
The summer doldrums are really over at Church. On September 30 we will have a nationally known speaker and leader in the inclusive church movement, Michael Adee, to bring our sermon and also to present an adult forum. His title for the forum is "Is there Room in the Gospel & Church for Gays?" Click here for his bio and information about the day.
Also Just announced: we will be traveling to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi for an inter generational mission trip to aid with Katrina Recovery. The trip will be in February and already 22 people are signed up. We are inviting anyone who wants to help to join up, we will make all arrangements and take care of modest accommodations and travel. As a bonus for working four days we will have a day to enjoy the recovering city of New Orleans, the Big Easy. All the details here. Want more information still or want to sign up, call First Presbyterian Church at 860 246-2224.
Check back tomorrow and I hope to have information on HARVEST, a multicultural celebration at First Presbyterian Church on October 7, 2007.
Showing posts with label Doing Good. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doing Good. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
The Walk Against Hunger this year was a tremendous success.
That's Me with Gloria McAdam, executive of Foodshare receiving my certificate. More Pictures from the Award celebration. I personally raised $1250, $100 was redistributed to other First Pres walkers so some of our younger walkers could receive a prize.
The total raised by Team First Presbyterian for the Walk Against Hunger was over $11,400!
Once again, First Presbyterian's walkers and contributors outdid themselves in helping Hartford's hungry people. Led financially by a fabulous showing from Holly Billings and Pastor Terry Davis, FPC raised $5300 dollars more than last year's not insubstantial effort and was well represented when eighteen members and friends cruised through the sunshine in Hartford's West End. Based on the on line fundraising totals we believed that Holly Billings was the top individual fund raiser and that First Presbyterian Church was on top of the list of faith organizations. At the awards presentation we discovered that one or two other individuals raised more over all than Holly’s $6100 plus. With $15,621 in gifts the team from St. Patrick St. Anthony parish (With a much larger congregation) bested First Presbyterian Church.
Thanks to all of our members who again so amply supported the FPC team!. Thanks again to Keith Rhoden, Barb Yates, Sue Jungi, Deb Meadows, Terry Davis, Carl and Shirley Dudley, Pauline Robertson, Holly Billings, Lois Maxwell, Saundra Spinelli, Marissa Cort, Esther Darko, Solana Gadson, Rusty, Grant, and Karen Spears, and George and Carolyn Blick for going out and asking their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and relatives to support this worthwhile cause. Special thanks as well to Marian Cooke for helping with the pre-walk luncheon as well as Robin Roberts for catapulting the team so far up the donor list.
For the second consecutive year, Center City Churches has been named the number one fundraiser among benefiting agencies with our 218 walkers amassing $60,090, the largest sum ever raised by a single agency. (Eighty percent of the gross total comes directly to the agency to support MANNA: 20 percent goes to Foodshare to support other Hartford-area food programs.) This distinction will bring a $500 bonus to the net total, with contributions are still being submitted to Foodshare in our name. Plus corporate matching gifts and contributions made directly to MANNA will take us over the top of the Walk Committee's s-t-r-e-t-c-h goal of $62,500!
Gloria McAdams, Executive Director of Foodshare reports on the overall results. In total, this year's Walk Against Hunger raised $442,000! A full 10% above last year's results of $400,000 and well over our goal of $430,000! Congratulations and thank you to everyone who made that happen!
Once again, First Presbyterian's walkers and contributors outdid themselves in helping Hartford's hungry people. Led financially by a fabulous showing from Holly Billings and Pastor Terry Davis, FPC raised $5300 dollars more than last year's not insubstantial effort and was well represented when eighteen members and friends cruised through the sunshine in Hartford's West End. Based on the on line fundraising totals we believed that Holly Billings was the top individual fund raiser and that First Presbyterian Church was on top of the list of faith organizations. At the awards presentation we discovered that one or two other individuals raised more over all than Holly’s $6100 plus. With $15,621 in gifts the team from St. Patrick St. Anthony parish (With a much larger congregation) bested First Presbyterian Church.
Thanks to all of our members who again so amply supported the FPC team!. Thanks again to Keith Rhoden, Barb Yates, Sue Jungi, Deb Meadows, Terry Davis, Carl and Shirley Dudley, Pauline Robertson, Holly Billings, Lois Maxwell, Saundra Spinelli, Marissa Cort, Esther Darko, Solana Gadson, Rusty, Grant, and Karen Spears, and George and Carolyn Blick for going out and asking their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and relatives to support this worthwhile cause. Special thanks as well to Marian Cooke for helping with the pre-walk luncheon as well as Robin Roberts for catapulting the team so far up the donor list.
For the second consecutive year, Center City Churches has been named the number one fundraiser among benefiting agencies with our 218 walkers amassing $60,090, the largest sum ever raised by a single agency. (Eighty percent of the gross total comes directly to the agency to support MANNA: 20 percent goes to Foodshare to support other Hartford-area food programs.) This distinction will bring a $500 bonus to the net total, with contributions are still being submitted to Foodshare in our name. Plus corporate matching gifts and contributions made directly to MANNA will take us over the top of the Walk Committee's s-t-r-e-t-c-h goal of $62,500!
Gloria McAdams, Executive Director of Foodshare reports on the overall results. In total, this year's Walk Against Hunger raised $442,000! A full 10% above last year's results of $400,000 and well over our goal of $430,000! Congratulations and thank you to everyone who made that happen!
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Walk Against Hunger
Sunday, May 6 was a beautiful day for the annual Walk Against Hunger. A couple of dozen members and friends from First Presbyterian Church joined thousands of others in the great event. We shared lunch before traveling to the Hartford for walk check in. Two personal friends, Paul and Mary Berlejung from Vermont arrived in time for both morning service and lunch before participating in the walk. Several people who joined us for the mission trip, Joy and Beth from Manchester and Sue and Debbie from Provincetown also joined in lunch and walk.
First Presbyterian raised over $11,000 for the walk. Because our team designated contributions for Center City Churches, Center City will receive 80% of this amount for the MANNA Food Programs while the rest is retained by Foodshare to support over 350 Hartford Area programs. Overall Center City Churches hopes that the 45 teams designating their contributions to the event will bring in $62, 500 (Gross $50,000). The MANNA basic needs programs annually provide more that 65,000 meals to homeless and low-income individuals, 76,000 pounds (that is 38 tons) of food to struggling families as well as weekend meals for hundred’s of frail seniors as well as supplemental food for children through the weekend backpack program.
View Pictures
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
FEELING GOOD - DOING GOOD
These thoughts will be published as my Pastor's Column in the April issue of First Thoughts, the newsletter of First Presbyterian Church. www.firstpreshartford.org
Back in January Jeannette Brown, president of the Center City Churches Board, shared an article from the New York Times Magazine entitled Happiness 101. I just got around to reading it and found it most stimulating. Early in the article a professor teaching a positive psychology class at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA makes the distinction between feeling good and doing good. Doing pleasurable things that make a person feel good does not really lead to lasting happiness, rather it leads to greater appetite for pleasure. After giving students an assignment to do something that gave them pleasure, then they were asked to perform an act of selfless kindness.
In this exercise the students learned the difference between feeling good and doing good. Almost universally they reported that doing good gave them a greater sense of happiness and satisfaction than did the more self centered pleasures. They learned that doing good is good for you.
I think of how much emphasis this congregation puts on getting involved in helping others through supporting the Souper Bowl Sunday and the Walk Against Hunger, volunteering at MANNA Community Meals, the Senior Café, the MANNA Food Pantry and Habitat for Humanity. We just sponsored a Mission Trip to help with hurricane recovery, we support Covenant to Care as well as visiting, encouraging, praying for our own members who are sick or in need. We do all of these things because Jesus calls us to these acts of mercy and human kindness; because our Lord commands us to feed the hungry and house the homeless, but the article suggests that we do benefit our selves from what we do.
My own experience as a volunteer echoes the findings of the George Mason Professor, that doing good benefits the one who volunteers; other involved Church members express the same experience. The girl scout leaders who traveled with us to Mississippi were talking about the real satisfaction that they felt in mentoring these girls from the time they were little and seeing them grow into responsible adults.
People looking at our service from the outside often think of “do gooders” as being dedicated, driven by duty to sacrifice our own pleasure to serve others without understanding the real joy that we feel in service.
If you are not involved in making the world a better place I would invite you, I would challenge you, to get involved, not just because you should but because you can, and because of the great benefit you will derive, as well as the benefit that others will receive from your service.
These thoughts will be published as my Pastor's Column in the April issue of First Thoughts, the newsletter of First Presbyterian Church. www.firstpreshartford.org
Back in January Jeannette Brown, president of the Center City Churches Board, shared an article from the New York Times Magazine entitled Happiness 101. I just got around to reading it and found it most stimulating. Early in the article a professor teaching a positive psychology class at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA makes the distinction between feeling good and doing good. Doing pleasurable things that make a person feel good does not really lead to lasting happiness, rather it leads to greater appetite for pleasure. After giving students an assignment to do something that gave them pleasure, then they were asked to perform an act of selfless kindness.
In this exercise the students learned the difference between feeling good and doing good. Almost universally they reported that doing good gave them a greater sense of happiness and satisfaction than did the more self centered pleasures. They learned that doing good is good for you.
I think of how much emphasis this congregation puts on getting involved in helping others through supporting the Souper Bowl Sunday and the Walk Against Hunger, volunteering at MANNA Community Meals, the Senior Café, the MANNA Food Pantry and Habitat for Humanity. We just sponsored a Mission Trip to help with hurricane recovery, we support Covenant to Care as well as visiting, encouraging, praying for our own members who are sick or in need. We do all of these things because Jesus calls us to these acts of mercy and human kindness; because our Lord commands us to feed the hungry and house the homeless, but the article suggests that we do benefit our selves from what we do.
My own experience as a volunteer echoes the findings of the George Mason Professor, that doing good benefits the one who volunteers; other involved Church members express the same experience. The girl scout leaders who traveled with us to Mississippi were talking about the real satisfaction that they felt in mentoring these girls from the time they were little and seeing them grow into responsible adults.
People looking at our service from the outside often think of “do gooders” as being dedicated, driven by duty to sacrifice our own pleasure to serve others without understanding the real joy that we feel in service.
If you are not involved in making the world a better place I would invite you, I would challenge you, to get involved, not just because you should but because you can, and because of the great benefit you will derive, as well as the benefit that others will receive from your service.
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