Winterfest

Winterfest was Saturday. There was no ice slide, no carnival games or free food or any of the other myriad of things we have come to expect and love from this day. But we still held Winterfest. We went out into the community to take the blessings to others. Friday we started with taking pizza and cookies to the local elementary school for an afternoon treat. What a blessing it was to do that and to see the faces of the faculty we dropped things off with. 

Then on Saturday, we held a food distribution event at the church, partnering with the Society of St. Andrew. We received almost 1400 boxes of food to hand out! Each box had dairy, meat and produce. We were able to bless several local food pantries and shelter organizations as well as folks from our community with food! 

The UMW collected toys to give away as well at the food distribution and families who were interested could go "shopping" through the free toys until they were gone. 

Finally, we sent folks out into the community to pay it forward and pay for people's bills. We sent folks to the Family Dollar, the local gas station and the local cafe to pay for everyone's bills until the money on their prepaid cards ran out ($6,000 in total for those three). We also paid $650 to the local state park to pay for everyone's entrance fees over the weekend and we sent teams out to two laundromats with a total of $1,300 between them to pay for people's laundry. 

Also we paid $5,000 to the local utility company to catch people up on their past due bills and paid off $2,000 in library fines for children at our town library; this helps 215 kids be able to check out library books again. 

So glad that Daryl and I and Parker and Wesley were able to help out with this new venture. We were exhausted after our day, but it was the good kind of tired that comes from knowing you made a difference.