About a month ago, I sent out an e-mail to all the first counselors in the Oakton Stake bishoprics. My goal was to find out what is already being done in the area of public affairs so that we could assess where we are as a stake in relation to our stake presidency's public affairs goals. (See above)
I heard from two counselors and both of them said they didn't think anything was being done in their wards. This led me to the conclusion that we haven't defined "public affairs" very well. I think the easiest description is: when your ward is doing anything in or for the community, it is a public affair.
I hope this blog will give you an idea of what kinds of things can be considered public affairs. If your ward performs acts of service for your community, that is a public affair!
The last thing we want to do is create more work for church members. We are busy people! We just want to highlight some of the good we're already doing to dispel some of the myths about who we are.
Thanks for taking the time to visit this blog!
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
LDS Family Serves a Village
Reston, Virginia –Have you ever wished you could do more than send money to help some of the world’s most needy people?
Christi Romney, a graduate of Brigham Young University currently living in Great Falls, Virginia, may have just the opportunity for you. She is the founder of Serve a Village (SAV), a nonprofit service organization that supports struggling communities around the world by building schools, teaching business development skills, and improving education, the environment and public health.
Christi, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, belongs to the Spring Lakes Ward, which is a Spanish-speaking congregation of the church located in Reston. Five years ago when she graduated from Brigham Young University, she was inspired to found SAV to continue the work started by her grandmother, Kathryn Hunt, who later passed away in 2007.
Her grandmother moved from Berkeley, CA to South Africa as a child because her uncle, who served an LDS mission there in the early 1930s, encouraged her family to move there with him. Kathryn’s family helped to strengthen the young church there, and saw many opportunities to serve. Years later after moving back to the States, Kathryn returned again to South Africa to marry her high school sweetheart who owned a farm near Magareng. During her life on the farm she essentially adopted the community and rallied the rest of her family to help support the village by shipping school supplies, books, clothing, sports gear, hygiene items and other essentials from the United States.
As members of the Mormon Church, the family has leaned on friends from their congregations to help. Women in the Relief Society organization of the church have knitted and crocheted hundreds of hats and scarves, and made fleece blankets. They have donated boxes of entertainment supplies, medical supplies, clothing and anything else needed to help.
The Relief Society organization of the LDS church is for women 18 years old and over. Its purpose is to provide support for the temporal and spiritual needs of all women in the church as well as others who are in need. There are over five million members of the Relief Society in over 170 countries in the world.
Serve a Village is currently accepting applications for expeditions to Kenya from April 29 – May 9, and August 5-15; and expeditions to South Africa from May 6-May 16, and August 12-August 22. Applications can be submitted online at www.serveavillage.org. Participants are responsible for their own travel and are charged an in-country cost of $1,500 to cover all food, housing, transportation, and cultural events. Expenses are tax deductible.
In addition to helping the community of Magareng, SAV provides support to other areas of the world in need including Moscow, Russia; Petit Goave, Haiti; Kibera, Kenya; and others.
The local LDS women in Reston teamed up with SAV to send their handmade hats, scarves, fleece blankets, and entertainment supplies to the Moscow Children’s Cancer Hospital to support the children during their long hours in the hospital.
Christi said, “These donations really lift the spirits of the children, and their caregivers, and help the women in our congregation find meaningful ways to serve and fulfill the mission of the Relief Society organization.”
These same women helped SAV reach out to help the struggling residents of Petit Goave, Haiti after the devastating earthquake of 2010. “They gathered and shipped pallets of emergency supplies and vegetable seeds, along with embroidery thread, and needles. These items helped people plant neighborhood gardens, and develop cottage industries to sustain themselves,” Christi said.
“We were able to send supplies to Petit Goave, which is a community in southern Haiti where emergency supplies are rarely shipped. We now have a woman there named Marie Etter who is teaching embroidery as a cottage industry to generate income. She helps with the community garden which provides a sustainable food source for the villagers.”
She said the women are collecting gently used clothing, school supplies, and small toys for over 100 AIDS orphans served by the Retsweletse Child Care Center in Magareng. “We are developing a model community in Magareng, South Africa, that we hope can be applied to help other regions of the world. It is a program that revitalizes the community in terms of health, education, economy, and environment.
Medical supplies continue to be gathered and shipped to St. Macs Mother and Child Clinic in Africa’s second largest slum of Kibera, Kenya. The clinic is the only health clinic available to those living in Kibera.
SAV passes on 100 percent of contributions to the communities it serves. “The SAV directors are very aware of the needs of the communities in which we are involved, and we address those needs as directly as possible with generous donations, on-site expeditions, and awareness advocacy,” Christi said.
One of the other keys to success is to rely on strong volunteer leaders in the local communities to keep things growing,” she said. These local leaders, as well as Christi, her family and many friends donate their time, talents, and energy to these projects because of their strong desires to serve. “There are no paid employees, so all the donations go solely to the projects.
President Wheatley facilitated a generous donation from the church
for LINK Against Hunger in January.
Lisa Lombardozzi, a volunteer for LINK Against Hunger
was given $1,000 worth of food to fill their Herndon pantry shelves after
they were depleted over the holidays.
Brother Tom Pocock at the Bishop's Storehouse gave her a tour
and an overview of the storehouse. Now the Herndon Ward is teaming up
with churches in the Ashburn/Herndon/Sterling area to volunteer
on a regular basis with this community based organization.
Each auxiliary will be stepping up to include annual service projects
for the LINK program. Some of the services may include picking up
and delivering food to LINK recipients, rotating food, and organizing and
cleaning the pantry located next to the United Methodist Church in Herndon.
Herndon LDS Help Send Valentines to American Soldiers
January 21, 2011
Herndon, Virginia –Herndon members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teamed up with Operation Support Our Troops, Inc. to send Valentine packages to members of the U.S. armed forces deployed in remote areas of Afghanistan to remind them that they are supported and appreciated at home.
The two groups came together through a chance meeting at the local Costco in the fall when Nancee McAteer, vice president of Operation Support Our Troops inc., met Claudia Gibb, the president of the Oakton area 1,250 member LDS Relief Society, the women’s service organization of the church. When Nancee described her project, Claudia said, “I know a lot of women in our church that would love to help you.”
Nancee took her up on the offer, and Claudia made a few phone calls, and quickly assembled a team of local women eager to help. They gathered at Nancee’s home in Clifton with other members of the OSOT of the northern Virginia area, and packed, organized, and shipped over 1,200 pounds of holiday surprises to troops in remote locations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nancee said the church also donated about $1300 to the Christmas project.
McAteer received many thank you letters from soldiers who excitedly watched boxes full of Christmas goodies drop out of the sky from a C-130 turboprop military transport.
Nancee’s current project is to send boxes of Valentines to the soldiers. So with the help members of the Herndon congregation of the LDS church, packets of hand stamped military themed stationary and handcrafted boxes full of candy will be airlifted to the Signal Battalion of 520 people and a ranger company of 150 in Afghanistan by Valentines Day.
Many teenagers from the church’s youth program also pitched in to help.
OSOT was founded eight years ago to help improve the morale and welfare of members of the armed forces deployed in harm’s way. They send care packages, messages of support, and items soldiers can’t easily get when they are deployed.
For more information on to help the troops with these kinds of projects, go to osotinc.org.
http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=347930&paper=66&cat=104
Elder Michaely Helps Australian Flood Victims
January 22, 2011
Herndon, VA -- Herndon resident Ryan Michaely is currently serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Brisbane, Australia, but instead of going door-to-door proselytizing, he is canvassing neighborhoods helping flood victims recover from what has been described as the worst flood in 50 years in the third largest city of Australia.Elder Michaely, a 2008 graduate of Herndon High School who was dubbed “Mr. Herndon” by the HHS student body, has been in Brisbane for just over a year as an LDS Church missionary.“We are moving heaps of heavy furniture, and taking doors off of homes so that furniture can be moved in and out,” he said. “We’ve moved equipment and furniture up to dry land and anything else that needs to be done.” One of the worst scenes, Elder Michaely said, was to see the local Woolworths store buried under water.One of the families Elder Michaely was able to help was Peter and Sheila Sticklen and their two children, Ben (23) and Rachael (17). The Sticklens said the babbling brook at the back of their house turned into a raging torrent. Peter said he stood mesmerized at the window of his house looking at a wall of water swirling around his house.Elder Michaely said he and Elder Jonathon Lester from Temecula, California helped the Sticklens and others who needed “muck and dirt swept out of their homes, and whatever else was required.”The two church missionaries live in Emerald Township, one of the hardest hit areas, where eighty percent of the town went under water, meaning Elder Michaely and Elder Lester have plenty of work to do helping citizens recover from the disaster.
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