Service Sunday

What's the best way to keep a group of little boys busy on a rainy Sunday? Put them to work!

Sunday was our planned service day. We combined all our projects into one day, and made it a bit of a party. A good mix of teens, older children and young kids worked well together to plant seeds, made laundry soap and make dog biscuits. Let's take these one at a time.

 

The Plants

The service project for this year was to benefit the South Carolina Botanical Garden. We had gone earlier in the fall to do some work to some of the plants. For the spring, we decided that we wanted to give some plants for the butterfly garden. Led by teacher Carolyn Turner, the younger class planted Scarlet Runner Beans. The flowers that the beans produce are delicious to both the butterflies and the hummingbirds. After mixing up the dirt, the children planted the seeds in peat pots, with stakes so that the beans could germinate.

This was Carolyn's last project with Religious Education before she moves to be closer to her daughter and grandchild. Thanks for all you have done for us Carolyn! We will miss you and are grateful for your work in the classroom and with the committee.

We will plant the seedlings at the garden on May 17, at noon, following class. Plan to meet at the Hayden Conference Center at the garden.

The Soap

The teens made laundry soap before and sold it to great acclaim. We decided to make it again. The soap contains washing soda, baking soda, borax and fels naptha. The first three ingredients come in powder form, but not the fels naptha. Grinding that soap is the tricky part of this project. We chose several methods: we ground it in a meat grinder, we grated it and we microwaved it. While microwaving it is entertaining as the soap expands like a balloon, it also creates a strong smell and it takes a while to cool off, so you can crumble it into a powder. Fortunately, it turns out that all these methods are fun for boys, and we got 21 containers of soap made in quick fashion. Look for the soap at the next Trading Post on May 10. We have seven containers in each scent: unscented, lavender and purification. They are not strongly scented. The purification is good for removing strong odors from clothes.

The Biscuits

This is our third year making these bones, which are very popular with our congregation's dogs. They contain egg, flour, oats, dry milk and every dog's favorite: PEANUT BUTTER. Two teams of three worked to make about 100 biscuits, and everyone worked to make the tags to go in the bags of biscuits. We sold some at the auction; look for Max to sell the rest! The proceeds from the sale of the biscuits go to the UUFC general fund.