Category: Newsletter
Strawberry Festival Volunteers Needed
On June 23rd, our congregation will welcome friends and neighbors to the 44th Annual 
Strawberry Festival at the White Meeting House. As you know, it takes many hands to make this fundraiser a success. While clipboards for potluck dishes and festival duties will be passed in church this Sunday, again, we encourage you to use our online SIGN-UP GENIUS to let us know how you are going to help. If you do use the sign-up genius, no need to add your name to the clipboards! We will make sure that names from the clipboards are added to the online tool so things remain as streamlined as possible and so we don’t end up with 20 lasagnas.
You will note that we have decided not to pick our strawberries this year. The local farm we have worked with in the past does not have a crop this year and other farms’ prices are high. Instead, we will focus our fellowship efforts on hulling! We’ll have music going, fun treats and the hullers out.
This year, we are adding “apprenticeships” to the roster of duties. Have you ever wanted to sign up to run the dishwasher but are afraid of that giant, silver contraption? No worries. You can work with Marty to learn the ins and outs of dishwasher operation. Always wondered how those biscuits are made? Sign up to work with Harriet in the kitchen on Thursday morning and we promise, you’ll be a pro my mid-day.
Thanks in advance for your time and effort and we look forward to a super Strawberry Festival.
Strawberry Festival at the White Meeting House. As you know, it takes many hands to make this fundraiser a success. While clipboards for potluck dishes and festival duties will be passed in church this Sunday, again, we encourage you to use our online SIGN-UP GENIUS to let us know how you are going to help. If you do use the sign-up genius, no need to add your name to the clipboards! We will make sure that names from the clipboards are added to the online tool so things remain as streamlined as possible and so we don’t end up with 20 lasagnas.You will note that we have decided not to pick our strawberries this year. The local farm we have worked with in the past does not have a crop this year and other farms’ prices are high. Instead, we will focus our fellowship efforts on hulling! We’ll have music going, fun treats and the hullers out.
This year, we are adding “apprenticeships” to the roster of duties. Have you ever wanted to sign up to run the dishwasher but are afraid of that giant, silver contraption? No worries. You can work with Marty to learn the ins and outs of dishwasher operation. Always wondered how those biscuits are made? Sign up to work with Harriet in the kitchen on Thursday morning and we promise, you’ll be a pro my mid-day.
Thanks in advance for your time and effort and we look forward to a super Strawberry Festival.
PB&J Summer Food Shelf Challenge
School is almost out and with that comes increased need in many family pantries for peanut butter, jelly and bread! Deb Utton, our food shelf coordinator is challenging us to fill our collection baskets with jars of Peanut Butter and Jelly, all kinds! You can bring in bread too, though that never seems to be a big issue down at the food shelf.
Thanks for your continued support of the food shelf. Over one hundred families from the area use it on a regular basis to help supplement their budget.
Community Art Show
The annual Community Art Show is being hung today. It is a wonderful collection of sculpture and painting and multi-media artwork showcasing the extraordinary talent right here in our own community.
Many thanks, as always, to Torrey Smith for spearheading this project. It brings life to our sanctuary walls each time!
Laundry Love
Laundry Love began as a church group working with the homeless in California after a conversation with a homeless man revealed that if he had clean clothes people might treat him like a human. Big problem. Simple solution: offer to do his laundry.
This has become a movement. I heard about it from the Barre Congregational Church who offers laundry love services and finds the need as great as you might imagine. Shortly after I heard about it from Barre, I received a call for help from a woman in Duxbury who was desperate to get her laundry done, but with all of the other demands on her limited income, had been unable to do it. Now her children were being made fun of at school for smelling. Could we help.
We did. But that story led me to challenge you to join forces with Laundry Love.Org and try it out in Waterbury. Well, several of you offered money on the spot and Deb Utton volunteered to help get it from dream to reality. We are having success and are ready to make it happen!
We have received the support from the Waterbury Laundromat, who will be providing detergent to us free of charge. The Waterbury Good Neighbor Fund will be providing the quarters, and we are advertising around town.
All we need from you are 2 volunteers each session. Laundry sessions will be on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of each month, from 5 pm – 7:30 pm through the summer. That will be our trial balloon period. We’ll reassess at the end of summer.
Here’s a link you can follow to go to the sign up for volunteering.
NB — Nothing about this work is difficult! We do not touch people’s laundry. Our only job is to welcome people who have a laundry voucher, put the money in the machines when they are ready, and tidy up a bit when we’re done. There will be written instructions and information available.