OUUC Religious Education

Dear OUUC Families,

OUUC will once again be hosting Camp Quixote starting March 13th and going on for 90 days. The camp will be staying in the yard next to the Out of the Woods Shelter on our property, and the church has several tasks as host. There are three main areas for volunteers: Hosting, Dinners, and Moving and Clean Up.

The camp needs hosts to take shifts during the day (the camp residents man the host tent during the night) every day. Hosts need to be 18 years old, but children and youth may host with a parent. There will be Host Trainings at church at 12:30 on the next two Sundays, and some more will be scheduled during Camp Q.’s stay.

The church will host dinners for the camp residents every Sunday night, but we also want to provide meals for other nights of the week. There will be a sign-up for volunteers to provide meals.

And the camp needs folks with strong backs and trucks to help move them to OUUC and then on to their next host site. Afterward we will also need volunteers to help clean up the site where the camp was.

I have been volunteering at Camp Q. with my kids for several months, providing a meal a month. It has been an amazing opportunity for my kids (6 and 4 years old) and has launched many interesting family conversations. We have talked about why and how people become homeless, why it is important to care for others, and even about the importance of brushing your teeth! It is both possible and enriching to volunteer with your kids and bring them along with you. I would highly encourage you to see this as an opportunity for family volunteering – we have 3 months of volunteer slots to fill so there is plenty for everyone to do!

If you have any questions about kids and volunteering, you can feel free to contact me.

in peace,
Sara Lewis, DRE

This coming Sunday in Religious Education we will be doing a service project in class to pack bag lunches for a Habitat for Humanity volunteer work crew.  We’ll read a book about homes and about the work that Habitat for Humanity does, and then the kids will decorate the bags and make Thank You notes for the volunteers. 

If you are able, please bring food donations that can go in the lunch bags: fruit, water bottles/cans of soda/juice boxes, bags of chips, and sandwich fixings.  Note: I will make the sandwiches later, on the day of the work party.

Last Sunday, the kids in our 2nd-5th grade class learned about a program called Homeless Backpacks, which provides food for homeless and at-need students.  The students can pick up the food packets at the nurse’s office, to bridge the nutrition gap on weekends and extended school holidays.  While we are enjoying Spring Break this week, it wouldn’t be fun if you were going hungry because of it. 

There will be a bin in the foyer, and please bring donations of foods such as cereal or protein bars, cup of noodles, applesauce or pudding cups, or juice boxes.  We will collect food items for the next several weeks.

A few weeks ago, when we launched the Guest At Your Table program, Rev. Vaeni and I told a story about water rights in South Africa, and the struggle to stop the water company from installing prepaid meters in low-income neighborhoods.  The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee supported the activists who took their case to court.  The story isn’t over, however, and UUSC continues to support the human right to water.  Read more about it, here.  This is the kind of work that you support when you put money in that Guest at Your Table box.  And please remember to return your boxes to the church office this Sunday!

Guest At Your Table, a fundraising project for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), has been a tradition at OUUC for many years, and it has brought the work of the service committee to families’ dinner tables in the form of donation boxes that families can fill with change and bills and bring back to the church to be sent to UUSC.  In my home, my kids love to look at the pictures on the box of some of the people who are helped by the UUSC, and they enjoy collecting donation money for the box.  It’s a great tool for teaching compassion and giving to your kids.   Boxes were available last Sunday, but it is not too late to get one at church.  Please return them to the church office by April 5th.