Blog editor story-- For a month before our Mormon Helping Hands event, I was swarming in yellow vests due to taking pre-event publicity pictures, and Primary pictures. The day before, Cliff and I went to Chico to attend our grandchildren's piano recital, and our daughter Alison and her husband took us out to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. After the meal we were all opening our fortune cookies and reading the notes inside. Mine said, "Focus in on the color yellow tomorrow for good luck!" Wow! I don't normally believe fortune cookies, but this one predicted a perfect day, and it was! Ann Kerr
Our Story
Over 900 members turned out May 8 to work on projects in many locations throughout the stake. High Councilman Dan Sroufe headed the event, and two high councilmen (team leaders) were in charge of finding projects and organizing them in each city. Two people from each ward were then called to be volunteer coordinators to do the leg work always involved in a major event such as this.
Public Affairs worked with them, as the event itself was "public affairs," and it wasn't a matter of just getting stories in the newspaper. We began two months before to get the word out. Public Affairs High Councilman Steve Demetras directed the making and printing of a large poster that was displayed in two foyers of each building.
An Invitation to the Children of the Stake
Ann Kerr has a friend Crescent City whose little boy was watching a MMH event between sessions of General Conference. He said to his mom, "I want to be a Mormon Helping Hands." It was just too cute! Stake Primary President Linda Kraude picked up on it and scheduled a photo shoot, Kathy Marshall designed a poster, Ann printed them at Costco, and each ward Primary was given one to get the children excited about serving. This is the poster.
It was also made into small cards which some wards gave children to take home. (Note: the photographer for this poster, as well as two MMH events in Galt, was Willie Douglas, an 18-year-old non-member high school senior in Galt. She did an excellent job and we came to appreciate her so much.)Below is a picture of some of Lodi Third Ward's primary children showing that they know what Helping Hands is and are ready to serve.
The Mormon Helping Hands Blog
As the event neared there was some confusion among members about where they should serve and where the various parks were. To fill this need Karen Hansen, under the direction of Ann Kerr, created a blog with all the information for every project in the stake, including addresses and maps. Steve Demetras wrote a message to the stake about what Mormon Helping Hands is and why we are involved in it. It proved to be very useful.
Tweet Tweet Tweet
Joan Paris, wife of the bishop in Murphys, and a 15-year veteran in public affairs, gave us an idea that was tried in the Bay Area: to have a group of teens become i-reporters and send pictures to news venues and friends using their cell phones and social networking. Ann Kerr put the word out on Facebook, and Karen Hansen, a tech savvy mother of four, volunteered to head it up.
Steve Demetras contacted stake leaders to get a list of "connected youth" who could make this idea happen and be successful. Karen worked hours contacting them, finding out the best way to do it, then teaching them how. (As it turned out, Facebook and Twitter are the main sites used for this purpose.)
We met at Lodi Lake before May 8 to go over details and take their photos. In the picture below, Karen Hansen works with Trevor Woods, Sarah Stewart, Lizith Velarde, Austin Marianna, Katie Weeks and Robert Haggard.
Feeling that an adult leader should be a part of this, Joseph Anderson, first counselor in the Stake Presidency, volunteered to learn. Karen met him at the stake center to teach him, and he was excited about doing it. When I caught up to him at Lodi Lake to take his picture, he had already made several tweets.
Here is a short video showing how President Anderson learned to tweet.
Our Newspaper
Coverage
We had stories in every newspaper in our stake area. Kit McDermed was successful in getting a story in the San Andreas Press and Carol Edgren placed one the the Valley Springs News. The Amador Ledge Dispatch combined both stories and printed them with two pictures of children working. Pre-event and post-event stories were printed in both the Galt Herald and Lodi News-Sentinel. Below are some scans of these stories.
The Lodi story with two more pictures can be found on the Internet here.The Galt story can be found here. The Ledger Dispatch story can be found here.
City Proclamations
We were asked to have each city formally declare "Mormon Helping Hands Day." It only happened in Ione, where Gaylon Hansen and Mike McDermed presented the proclamation to Ione City Councilor Skip Schaufel.
The city of Galt doesn't do proclamations, but Mayor Randy Shelton presented Lodi MHH leaders with a formal "thank you" Tuesday, May 18. In the picture below L to R: Dan Sroufe, Mayor Shelton, Todd Messersmith, and Bishop Dave Johnson.
Special Note on Ione Ward
Ione has an annual city event and parade which is usually held on Sunday. Because it is the sabbath, the LDS couldn't participate. So this year city officials changed the date to a Saturday and it just happened to be May 8. Members could not very well abandon the city event, since the date had been changed just for them, so they had their MHH day on May 1. Below are some pictures from the city parade in which they participated on May 8. "Choose the Right" cub scouts, and families -- another great public affairs activity.
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