Generosity Stories: More Than Lilies
By Barbara Vainio
When the Worship & Music Committee was beginning to plan for Our Saviour’s Easter service this year, the topic of Lilies was discussed. The idea to replace the traditional purchase of lilies with donations to Lutheran World Relief to help the people of Ukraine. The donations could still be made in honor or memory of someone and would be displayed in the lobby for people to see who was being honored.
We had no idea if the congregation would like this idea and if they would support it.
We made the announcement during the church service a couple of weeks before Easter Sunday, being sure to tell everyone that we would still have some lilies on the altar so that the church would still look like Easter.
We had more donations than we’d had the previous year for Easter lilies. People stopped in the lobby to look at the beautiful cross constructed by Simon Lussier that held the donation sheets folded to look like flowers. In 3 weeks we received more than $3500 in donations Lutheran World Relief. I’m pretty sure we never had $3500 donated for lilies!!
Once again the generosity of Our Saviour's members made a difference to people. We will probably never meet them but that didn’t matter. We just wanted to make their lives a little better.
What should we do for Christmas?
When the Worship & Music Committee was beginning to plan for Our Saviour’s Easter service this year, the topic of Lilies was discussed. The idea to replace the traditional purchase of lilies with donations to Lutheran World Relief to help the people of Ukraine. The donations could still be made in honor or memory of someone and would be displayed in the lobby for people to see who was being honored.
We had no idea if the congregation would like this idea and if they would support it.
We made the announcement during the church service a couple of weeks before Easter Sunday, being sure to tell everyone that we would still have some lilies on the altar so that the church would still look like Easter.
We had more donations than we’d had the previous year for Easter lilies. People stopped in the lobby to look at the beautiful cross constructed by Simon Lussier that held the donation sheets folded to look like flowers. In 3 weeks we received more than $3500 in donations Lutheran World Relief. I’m pretty sure we never had $3500 donated for lilies!!
Once again the generosity of Our Saviour's members made a difference to people. We will probably never meet them but that didn’t matter. We just wanted to make their lives a little better.
What should we do for Christmas?
Posted in generosity stories, updates
Tagged with generosity, ukraine, mission, lutheran world relief, easter
Tagged with generosity, ukraine, mission, lutheran world relief, easter
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