Auction for Missions

Saturday night I attended a silent auction --a fundraiser for our mission team to the  Dominican Republic.   
As well as items for auction, there was dessert and coffee. Lots and lots of desserts.  I think the sugar high was  designed to reduce bidder inhibitions. It certainly worked on me!

 I thought many bids were too low for the quality of the item up for auction, so I bumped up the bid.  I came home with four dozen roses -- and a few other items. Apparently, instead of boosting the prices, I discouraged other bidders. Good intentions gone awry.
Ah well, it's all in a good cause, as they say, and I've shared the roses with others.

The silent auction is a fun event, requiring enormous organization and a small army of workers. Sometimes it is the main event for funding the mission trip, other times it is an adjunct.  At SPPC we've been quietly fund-raising for many months.

workers

Some congregants have Thrifty's Smile Cards that ensures a portion of their grocery bills is donated to buy school supplies and medical items for the mission team to take with them.

more workers

More directly, we have a team of cooks who makes soup, meat pies and other goodies for sale. The food comes in small portions, it's tasty and it's economical. Many in our congregation have a big appetite for these small meals. 

Loved this, refrained from bidding

We also hold a bottle drive from January to March, adding a little more to the coffers and saving people a trip to the recycle depot.

All of these efforts mean that our mission team, Benjamin, Darlene, Diane and Joan, is well positioned for their trip to the Dominican Republic a few weeks from now.  

ready for fall

spring planter that I resisted

 Matthew 25:40: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Matthew 9:35-36 “Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.”

Whether we're making soup or buying roses, we too can show compassion for the distressed and dispirited in our world.