MDG Day of Prayer, Fasting and Advocacy

September 25th is a national day of prayer, fasting, and advocacy for the Millennium Development Goals. Whatever day you happen to read this post, please take a moment to DO SOMETHING to support these.



There are about 1 BILLION people in the world living on less than $1 a day.
Every 3 seconds, a child dies of preventable, treatable causes (diarrhea, malaria, etc).
Some things you can do include:

Go to the Hunger Site. Click there and food will be donated by the sponsors just because you saw the advertising on their page. You can also sign up to get a daily e-mail reminder. I've been doing this for years. It takes about 10 seconds a day, and it gives someone food for the day.

Sign up to receive Action Alerts from EPPN or another group. When you receive one, it will take you about 1 minute to complete a form to send a statement to your legislators about issues around poverty and justice.

Loan $25 (or more) thru KIVA.org. It is really fun to look through their lists of people approved for micro-loans and choose the actual person and business you'll support.

Donate money to the Heifer Project, ERD, Curamericas, or the charity of your choice that helps "the least of these."

Have you DONE something yet? If not, stop right now and do one of these things.

I thank you, and God thanks you.

Samuel Rotation Sunday School

Harcourt Parish is again using WorkshopCycles for our 1st-5th grade Sunday School this year. It's quite affordable, but is best when you have a church member spend some time with it to fit it to your group. This year I'm investing more by creating short summary lessons plans for each of the workshops.

Our Samuel Cycle included:
Story (a game and a drama from WorkshopCycles)
Music (learning the torah ora hymn "God has spoken to his people" and a circle dance)
Art (decorating pillow cases--because Samuel was sleeping when God called him)
Kitchen (from WorkshopCycles-making rice krispy treats, a mix of loud and quiet food)

I was lucky enough to be able to lead the Art Workshop. It was tons of fun. After reading the cycle story, we talked about prayers we knew, scripture verses we knew, things we might like to hear God say to us, etc.

I had gathered a bunch of pillowcases from our parish rummage sale, washed them, and put cardboard in them to make a nice, flat surface. The children used painters pens, sharpies, and fabric markers, all of which worked really well.

The girls set up a table and did a great job decorating with dots and squiggles, writing scripture and prayers.

The boys drew pictures and accented with words.


Here is a fantastic monster being drawn (on the blue pillowcase). We paired it with the words, "you shall not be afraid of any terror by night" Psalm 95:5a . He could hardly wait to use it!


Next week we begin a rotation on CROP Walk that I created. Fun!