Scouts, church youth raise $1,000

From Staff Reports

Tue, May 13 2008

— Over the Christmas holidays the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and youth of Sunset Church of God sold luminary bags to help raise money for the community.
As the season approached we wanted to focus on a way that the kids could help to give to the community this season and to help and touch as many lives as possible.
In November the kids helped to pack bags of goodies that were decorated with scriptures and messages of giving for Tarboro Community Outreach as an added bonus to their Thanksgiving.
While doing this Sister Mary Ann from TCO came to educate the kids on the importance of the organization that she serves and how as a community we can help the organization to fulfill needs of those less fortunate. She made a great impact on the kids with her gentleness, kindness, compassion and understanding. That experience help to teach the kids many of the purposes of Scouting such as helping them with character development, spiritual growth, good citizenship and friendly service. At the same time it helped them with core values of Scouting such as: compassion, citizenship, and responsibility in helping to serve God.
The Thanksgiving experience was wonderful enough that we decided not to stop there but to continue to help by raising money for Community Outreach and also for another wonderful organization in our community, My Sister's House in Rocky Mount. We decided to sell luminary bags in honor or in memory of someone. We set a goal to sell at least 1,000 bags.
We were going in full swing until the fire ban was set for our community. So we thought of other ways to light the bags that would be safe. We tried LED candles and glow sticks and voted on glow sticks.
And, of course, not to break the law, we contacted the fire chief to get the OK to continue with the bags.
We sold 1,015 bags. We had a date set for Sunday, Dec. 23 to place the bags along the perimeters of the church property at Sunset. We also had planned a live nativity and caroling by the youth to begin at 6 p.m.
However, as we were deligently working and praying on the 23rd to set the bags when a much needed and prayed for rain postponed our event. Therefore, we set the bags on New Year's Eve to help bring in the New Year.
This year we also placed the bags in memory of Eddie Pilgreen, a member of the church who went to be with the Lord just before Christmas.
Our purpose was to teach the kids more about giving and helping others but we also wanted them to learn the real reason for celebrating the season and that is with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Checks were presented to both organizations on Thursday.

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