On August 31st, September 1st, and September 4th, CARP New Jersey and Generation Peace Academy (GPA) collaborated on the True Love Bakery service project. It has been hard on everyone as the community has not been able to meet up face to face, but through the action of visiting their homes with gifts of homemade cookies, some scripture, and singing songs, we hoped to give our love and appreciation.
Beginning the day on August 31st, CARP NJ and GPA gathered at the CARP House to begin preparations. Four teams were created to work on the different aspects of making cookies, designing papers with scripture, practicing songs to sing, and calling families to confirm the time of visitation. We worked all together in these teams with nine CARP NJ members and eight GPA members. By the end of the day, we had completed packaging around 700 cookies!
On September 1st, CARP NJ and GPA kicked-off the service day at the home of Pastor Naokimi Ushiroda, the Assistant Pastor of the Clifton Family Church. With a strong prayer and a song for the pastor and his family, we split off into our teams by county, filled with energy and hope.
We focused on delivering to families who had recently celebrated their anniversary, elder members of the community, church leadership, and guests. We regrouped and concluded at the home of Rev. Demian Dunkley, President of Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
On September 4th, we visited Christian ministers as well as families whom we were unable to reach on Tuesday. We kicked off the day at the home of Pastor Crescentia DeGeode, the Pastor of the Clifton Family Church, to offer gifts, and, in return, we received words of love and wisdom. One participant said,
“When I went baking on Monday, I had a really good time. I was so happy to connect with my brothers and sisters and I’m really happy that we were able to bake these cookies for
the Christian ministers and some of our church members. It gave me lots of hope and joy, and I really hope that they like the cookies and are really moved. I really feel like we should start young helping our community making people feel happy and joyful. Really we need more young people to help out with projects like this because for an elderly seeing a young person helping out it will really warm their hearts.” - Miatta Nelson
Overall, the True Love Bakery was a great success and opportunity to serve the community. This semester, the service department of CARP plans to do at least one service project every month in addition to one fun activity. Stay tuned for more exciting service activities!
Check out more of CARP New Jersey on their Facebook page. Share your story to jennifer@carplife.org.