In a year where the world’s needs exceed our imagination, it is a balm for our souls to know we are a community of faith that does what we can with what we have, making the world brighter by sharing our bounty. Here is a brief list of the ways your family of faith has made a difference in the world this season.

Compassionate Giving:

• We have restarted our Food 4 Kids Backpack program, sending 160 bags of food home every weekend to families at Rawlings Elementary. (See more information about how you can help in this newsletter.)
• We, along with our community partners The Vine, Frog Song Organics, Land of Flowers Honey, and Swallowtail Farm raised $5240 for our Growing Hope Globally project (the most we have EVER raised!)
• We sent Christmas mini-grant to 10 individuals and families, and supported 4 local organizations (Helping Hands Clinic, St. Francis House, Kindred Spirit Prison Ministry and the Cultural Arts Coalition Science Bus) through our Christmas Mini Grants
• We sent generous donations to the Alachua County Remembrance Project, and Girls Place
• We sold* over 350 gifts resulting in just over $1000 being given to Rawlings Elementary School through our Christmas Gift Market- (see information below)

Also of note, three anonymous families made generous community contributions in the name of the United Church of Gainesville. One family sponsored an entire Habitat for Humanity house. One family provided funds to supply gifts to every resident of Sunset and Horizon Apartments. And one family is paying the mortgage for a woman and her child for three months.

And just this past Sunday, we filled two and a half cars with food donations for Gainesville Community Ministry and blankets and coats for the Grace Marketplace.

Thank you all for your generous support and love!

Rawlings Gift Market – Anne Casella

The Compassion in Action Committee would like to thank all of you for your generosity this Christmas in donating over 350 gifts to the Rawlings Christmas Angel gift market. Despite Covid-19 it was a rousing success. Based on our success last year, we believed we could again have a successful market but we went into it with some trepidation, not knowing if parents would actually show up to shop. There was no holiday concert this year drawing parents to the school. We also had to implement Covid-19 precautions, requiring temperature checks, masking and limited numbers of people in the cafeteria where the market was held to allow for social distancing. However, Rawlings did a great job of promoting the market and a line of shoppers was waiting when the market opened. We sold nearly all of the gifts and raised $1026 for Rawlings. We thank all of you who donated gifts and bags, those who assisted with pricing gifts, transporting them to Rawlings and setting up and staffing the market.