Once monthly we have family Sunday school at our church. Today the big project for families to work on together was decorating Christmas cookies to deliver to homebound members of our congregation. One kind woman baked about a million sugar cookies (well, at least a couple hundred), and we took them by the half-dozen, frosted them, decorated them with sprinkles and such, plated them, wrapped them, signed and attached handcrafted Christmas cards (made at last month's family Sunday school session), and for each plate chose a slip of paper with the name and address of a member of the congregation to be the recipient--someone living at home but not mobile enough to get out of the house, or someone living in a nursing home, etc.
Pastor Lisa explained that normally this is something that church staff would do around Christmas when making their regular rounds to visit homebound congregants, but they thought that this would be a good outreach project for us families--a way for us to serve, for us to meet other members of the congregation, and for homebound folks to get some social interaction with someone other than the familiar faces of the pastors. Because I had to spend the afternoon sequestered in my office grading my students' major final projects, Susan took the lead on delivering the goodies. We chose the names of several people living in the nursing home where Susan's grandparents live so that one of the stops could be to see Laura and E.J., too (with a plate of cookies for them, as well).
At supper tonight, Susan said that the nursing home residents to whom they delivered goodies seemed so legitimately happy to receive the cookies and the visit from her and her three little daughters. The ladies all agreed that it felt good to do something nice for someone else without expecting anything in return--and that, although it was a bit scary to think about going out to interact with a bunch of strangers, it was actually fun to meet new people and do kind things for them and bring a little unexpected light into their afternoon.
Here's hoping that someone surprises you with a plate of Christmas cookies sometime during this holiday season!
Two highlights from the afternoon: we took cookies to one of the nursing home residents who was playing cards with friends in the dining room. Thinking she might like to share them, we offered to leave them with her -- but she asked us to take them back to her room and didn't offer any to the other ladies!
ReplyDeleteThe other highlight was meeting Kevin's grandma Olga's cousin! He lives in Dickinson and he & his wife belong to our congregation, but we'd never met them. He remembered Olga fondly, and even remembered meeting Kevin's dad a time or two.