Gift Card Testimonial and Update
Hello, Chris Hamilton, new member on the Gift Card team with some BIG news to report. We are sponsoring a contest for the month of October. Anyone who buys a Scrip gift card this month will automatically be entered in the contest. What a great prize we have: a $50 gift card that can be used at Olive Garden or Red Lobster. Not familiar with the new cards? Stop by this Sunday to see what a wide variety of vendors and prices are available. Check out our monthly specials which earn more money for the church. Holidays are approaching fast; cards make nice way to remember people. I bought a Lowe’s and Ace Hardware card for a home improvement project. The cards helped to keep me within my budget.—Blessings Chris
TVUUC Social Action Initiative: Serene Manor Linda Capps, Linda Podbielski, and Kelli Covington
My name is Linda Capps and along with Linda Podbielski and often Kelli Covington and her daughter Rene Thompson we host Bingo night twice a month at the Serene Manor Nursing Home. Serene Manor is a nursing home for either the indigent or those who receive very little from Welfare checks or Social Security. Along with buying Bingo prizes, we often buy them things they need like shoes, sweaters and many personal items.
The bingo prizes usually consist of shampoos, cream rinses, socks, beef jerky sticks, trinkets, earrings, and diabetic candy. We always take a cooler with a bag of ice and diet sodas which they love. They never get an “icy” drink, and candy is out of the question for them because they have no sources for sugar-free candy. They love the prizes, and they love the bingo games.
Actually, we could use more donations for “prizes” and maybe a few folks to come and help. Usually around 20 of the residents show up for bingo night, and it takes about 4 people to manage everything that needs to be done. A few of the residents even need someone to help them with their cards.
Thanks so much!
TVUUC Social Action Initiative: Growing Native Grasses Mary Tebo
Because of the $100 that the Social Action Committee so generously awarded me, native warm season grasses are now growing on the slope near the top of the steps to the lower parking lot. Native grasses have often been considered as a replacement for the many invasive species that live on that slope. I’m not sure they will work there on a large scale, as I will describe below, but without this $100, I would never have known if they would grow there at all.
Conservation of native species is not really a priority of the Social Action Committee unless conservation is directly tied to the welfare of people. Consequently, the Social Action Committee encouraged me to hire an economically disadvan- taged worker to help with the project. I hired Abdallah Guruza, a political refugee from Southern Sudan, to help me plant the grasses. I paid Abdallah $10 an hour for 10 hours of work. He helped me prepare the site by chopping down some Ailanthus trees that overhung the slope and cast too much shade for grass to grow. He then helped me plant 400 plugs of assorted native grasses. Unfortunately, the latter part of May was one of the hottest and driest on record so, despite watering every other day, many of the grasses died.
For my part, I have learned that establishing native grasses on that slope will be a long and arduous task, and may not be possible if it requires such labor-intensive effort. Other, less labor-intensive methods for growing these grasses, such as planting seed with equipment available through the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, or spreading native grass hay that contains native grass seed, may work better.
