Lifetime365

Carriere, MS, Carriere First Baptist Church, Carriere, MS  (Contributor Linda Graham [edited])

I think the best fundraiser we ever had was the singing telegrams at Valentines Day. Now it has become an annual event. The kids take orders for singing telegrams and balloon bouquets. Two of our ladies dress up really country. Straw hats, blacked out teeth. Red lipstick braided Wigs,Overalls a guitar and a song. They would make up a couple of cute songs the night before. Southern draw and all!  They would knock on doors and just walk in office buildings with a bouquet of helium balloons tied to a Teddy bear or some candy. The 2 of them would break out sangin' into one of those songs. However appropriate for the holiday they were hilarious. They both could really sing, but they would sing it so off key, harmonizing all the while. One couldn't help but double over laughing. A little southern draw in the sangin' too! What talent. Suprised and embarrassed faces would appear red and most of the time laughing to tears. Nothing felt so good as seeing the wonderful laughs, straight from the heart on Valentines Day. How Sweet it is. We only charged $10.00 each for these wonderful singing telegrams and delivered balloons. God knows every smile was worth the extra time, money, and gas, it took to bring this to fruition. Proverbs says, A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. Well since 1997 on Valentines Day, our hearts are filled with merriment.  In fact we usually make every effort to deliver a little merriment to those who couldn't pay! What a blessing we get to be.

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Mary Douglas and Myself have for the 2nd time in three years begun doing a summer camp for our youth 14 and up. A ministering weekend with food, fun games and just a great time for the youth. We loved this, but this year was not able to purchase t-shirts for the kids to remember there weekend. To even be able to do this we had to charge the kids $25. for the weekend. However tight the weekend was we got a great band to lower their price and help us out. We did the entire weekend on about $500. We had 15 kids and 6 adults in one cabin. Wall to wall youth! What a weekend!!! we would love to do this again next summer or maybe something this fall. If we win this grant that is what we want the money to be allocated for. Thanks for doing this spirited grant contest. SO great to have the support of others poured into a christian organization. Blessings Indeed, Linda Graham