FREWSBURG - Barb Lobb and Penny Rosenberg's Sunday school class spent the summer doing good deeds.
Devin Wolfe has been helping his grandmother. Sofia Walter and Grace Cline did household chores. Gibson Kinney and Zayne Cline helped bring in firewood. Brayden Lobb cleaned the whole house. Even though these are all things that many kids do on a daily basis, the important thing was that the class did them without being asked to.
"Basically, what we were trying to teach them was how to help others and how to do things without being asked and how important that is," Rosenberg said.
Article Photos
Pictured above, Zayne Cline and Devin Wolfe carry food while Grace Cline and Sofia Walter, pictured at left, bring the food into St. Susan’s.
P-J photos by Nicholena Moon
For five weeks, the children from Wheeler Hill United Methodist in Frewsburg have been doing good deeds for others. Every time they did something good, Rosenberg or Lobb brought in a non-perishable food item to donate to St. Susan's soup kitchen. The class ended up with two shopping carts full of food.
"For every good deed during the week that they did without being told-it couldnt be expected of them-we brought in food," Lobb explained.
The bright-eyed kids unloaded cars full of foodstuffs at the soup kitchen Thursday morning with the help of their two teachers and Sue Colwell, executive director at St. Susan's.
Colwell asked the kids how doing good deeds made them feel, to which they all replied, "great!" with enthusiasm.
"It's really, really wonderful," she said about the kids' efforts.
Colwell went on to tell the group about the importance of the kindness and generosity of others in its daily operations.
"Whenever we need something, we can just say a simple prayer, and somebody, God always uses people, somebody will bring that item in," she said.
The project was based on a Bible verse and the idea of giving and loving one another, explained Lobb.
"Our Bible verse for the summer months was 'Love one another as I have loved you,'" she said, "because Jesus did good things for people that he loved, and we wanted them to do good things for people that they loved, or maybe even that they didn't love."
It is one thing to do good deeds, and quite another to see a tangible, positive effect of those actions. By equating a box of food for the hungry with an act of kindness, the class was able to see that they actually can make a change.
"They are just excited now to do things because I think they can see how little things make such a big difference," said Lobb.
"Especially after being here today, because they didn't have any idea of what would happen, and to see that we filled two shopping carts full of stuff just by doing good things, they can see how much it blessed not only them but other people," added Rosenberg.