Saturday, September 22, 2012

2012 Wrap Up: A Well of Success!





Robyn Mine
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I showed my children Trent and Jenna the video from the blog tonight and he ran upstairs and gave me his $5 dollars he'd been saving for a Lego set. Then Jenna gave me $2 in quarters and said "this is for the well people."   Thanks for organizing!

Betty Davidson
Betty shared that she was happy to donate to this project because water source is very dear to her heart. Her parents lived on an Indian reservation in Arizona and they had no water. Every few days they would have to haul water to their home. Betty mostly lived in boarding schools but remembers when she was at home many time helping her parents get the needed water. She mentioned how glad that she feels for these people we are helping to now have their own water. 

Audrey Bennett
Audrey saved all the money she has earned this summer taking numerous babysitting and pet sitting responsibilities and was able to raise $200 for the wells.

Anonymous
"Money has been tight for us this year. We didn't know if we could contribute to the well water project because every penny has had to go toward paying bills. But we have faithfully paid our tithing and somehow our income has stretched just far enough each month. Last week in August I received and unexpected refund check in the mail for $95. I was so excited and started planning a shopping excursion. Then I remembered the well project. How could I go shopping for something frivolous (but fun) when some of our brothers and sisters don't have clean water available. We are so grateful that we were given a way to contribute to this wonderful project! "

Anonymous
 In a nutshell, my wife made 40 loaves of bread and was able to sell those as well as a bunch of other stuff for around $260 for the well project.  Some of the bread was sold where I work and people were very generous because of the cause that was involved.  She also played the video for the wells during the garage sale which led to some brief but good conversations and the placing of two copies of the Book of Mormon.


Achievement Day Girls 
Had a fundraiser for the wells. With the great support of many of you they were able to raise $340 - enough to purchase 1/3 of a well! Way to go girls!!! 




Jacobsons
We set a goal as a family to raise the money through a combination of service and sacrifice. Like last year, we decided to give up paying for car washes and doing it ourselves. The kids loved it and we discovered that they'd be happy to do it every Saturday, so yay us! We also made lots of chocolate cookies and sold them first to our fellow ward members, and then to our neighbors. When we were still $80 short of our goal, I volunteered to make gumbo and then we made our goal. Grant especially loved coloring in the stones on the well to show the progress to our goal. Every time he wanted to color more stones in, we thought of another activity we could do as a family to raise more money.

Kenny heard a guy on the radio who talked about how he had traveled to a really poor country and one of the natives there asked him if it was true that in America we flush our toilets with drinking water. The man admitted that we did and he was really humbled by that. So was Kenny when he heard the story, and he was happy to take the kids around to the neighbors to take cookie orders. People would answer their door and Grant would shout, "WANT SOME COOKIES?" And then James would give our pitch of why we were trying to raise money, and our neighbors were happy to help. One man paid $20 for a half-dozen cookies!

The Young Women
A few of the YW in our ward collected donated baby items for the consignment store that Shellie Griffith was running. They and were able to raise about $300 for the wells.