12:00 – 3:00 pm, Sunday, November 15, 2009

Bring your friends and family for a fun-filled afternoon of live music, food and service!

Charity in Action, in partnership with Bryn Athyn Church, is sponsoring a community-wide outreach event to support caregivers for AIDS victims around the world. We will be assembling 1,000 kits which will be delivered through World Vision, an organization dedicated to helping people reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice.

You see, one year ago, while attending the National Outreach Convention in San Diego, CA, I had a transformative experience: I found out what it felt like to assemble a “caregiver kit” for World Vision. Since then, I have known that this was something I needed to share with the church in Bryn Athyn and the larger surrounding communities of the Philadelphia area. That is finally going to happen, this coming Sunday, November 15th, at the Bryn Athyn Church Society Building.

Here’s the story…

In countries across the world, but primarily in Africa, Asia, and South America, there are local people who spend time providing palliative care for neighbors who are dying of AIDS. Very often these local caregivers are children. They regularly visit neighboring homes, helping to relieve suffering and pain, to prevent infections and dehydration, and to show these people that they are loved. To help them do this, World Vision provides them with kits stocked with basic supplies–things like washcloths,soap, antibacterial salves, flashlights, etc., which are cheap and easy for us to get ahold of but sometimes very difficult or expensive to find in large supply where the caregivers live.

To help assemble these kits, WorldVision partners with churches and other organizations, who come together at some particular time and place, to go through the bulk-purchased supplies and pack them for shipment to individual caregivers.

Here’s a video that explains this in greater detail:

As Assistant Pastor at Bryn Athyn, I am really excited to be able to partner with Charity In Action and with WorldVision to make this possible. A typical kit costs around $28 for supplies, but we have already collected donations to cover the supplies for ONE THOUSAND caregiver kits! So we’re not asking you for money. All we need is just a few minutes of your time on Sunday afternoon to help us help others by assembling a kit or two. At the end of the process, you will have the chance to write a personal note of encouragement to be included in your caregiver’s kit, and then, if you like, you can do it all again. (And I’m betting you’ll want to!)

We at the Bryn Athyn Church are co-hosting this because we believe that we are called to love our neighbor by supporting the good we find in others. But we are inviting anyone in the Delaware Valley who is looking for a small and easy way to make a big difference in the lives of a dozen or more people to join us. We’re doing this because of what we believe, but you can be of any church, faith, religion, or philosophy to want to do good in the world.

So please join us, any time between noon and 3pm, at the Bryn Athyn Church Society Building, 600 Tomlinson Rd, Bryn Athyn, PA 19009. There will be live music, loving people, and a great opportunity waiting for you. Tell your friends!


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