Saturday, October 22, 2011

Project Mercy

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Matthew 25:40 
 
As I was checking out the news portion of the LDS church website, I came across something referring to ATMIT, the nutritious supplement used in several countries to fight hunger and famine. Wanted to know more, I did some research and discovered that it has its connection with Marta Gabre-Tsadick of Ethiopia, the founder of Project Mercy


In 1977, Marta Gabre-Tsadick, and her husband, Demeke Tekle-Wold, (photos of the two) and their dear friends, Pastor Charles and Fran Dickinson, established Project Mercy, Inc., an organization dedicated to providing emergency relief aid, educational assistance, and refugee relocation help to African refugees.  In the 1980s through the 1990s, Marta initiated innovative food and sewing programs that enabled Project Mercy to distribute food and clothing to hundreds of thousands of starving, needy refugees from Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Sudan, and Ethiopia.


ATMIT was developed by Marta and today is supplementing the diets of children in several countries. An LDS church website made this comment about ATMIT.

"Atmit is an excellent source of nutrition," said Elder James W. Hansen, M.D., Ph.D., a medical adviser and a missionary for the Church Welfare Services Department. "It is a milk-containing oat-flour-based nutritional product that is a good complement to whatever nutrition might be available from local sources. It has been used successfully as a well-tolerated food in some cases of extreme starvation. It encourages self-reliance by requiring some preparation by the consumer and the availability of water and fuel for cooking."

Atmit also contains sugar, salt and supplemental vitamins and minerals. The formula was recently improved by Elder Hansen and Dr. Michael L. Dunn, Ph.D., a professor from the BYU Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Science (see related article). A single serving provides 34 percent of the recommended daily allowance of protein, 43 percent of calcium, 99 percent of iron, and high percentages for a dozen vitamins and minerals for children under 5 years old. This formula helps them maintain some nutrition over a short period of time until crops are harvested and they can again thrive on a regular family diet.

For $6 dollars, US, this will feed a child for a month. What a value and what a wonderful use of our fast offering!

Friday, October 21, 2011

Volunteerism

We had a hospital auxiliary meeting on Monday evening.  One of the projects they needed help with was sewing Christmas stockings to put the babies in December in for their homecoming. I don't have a lot of time but wanted to assist this this project so took home two stocks. They are pretty cute and not hard to sew. I think I will look up the number of December births in 2010 to see how many are actually needed. My friend Mickie is also doing this project.

There is always a concern with how well the auxiliary is doing, we don't usually have many members attend the meetings but this meeting was the exception. There were about 30 there. We played a game called "Lucky Buck" where baskets are bid on. It was quite fun and an excellent fund raiser. I think over $300 was taken in on the game. All of the proceeds from fund raisers and membership go toward special projects for the hospital. I was quite impressed with what we were able to accomplish the fund raising. I will have to make some calls to find out what the projects were that the fundraising paid for.

Home for a few hours this morning before heading in to work a bit. Yesterday we completed the historical society fall newsletter and will mail that today. It is always a bit of a challenge to put together the newsletter. Right now we have so many things on our plate with the upcoming exhibit.
Britt spent the day working with the Sentence to Serve crew setting up our new exhibit platforms. They will be in again this morning. We have two new exhibits, a church exhibit and a parlor, music exhibit. It is a good thing we have the equipment we have to be able to do an exhibit such as this.
We do not have all of our exhibit poster designed yet. Have some of the info but not all of it. I would like to see us have more local photos but those don't seem to be coming in like we had hoped. Thank goodness we have photos from the Roseau Times Region from many years ago.

I just finished talking to James and Ashley. She is due to have their little boy in the beginning of February. They are very excited about that and have even considered the names already.

 They go to an English speaking branch for church. There is about fifty or sixty members from many nationalities including the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. On Monday they went to the temple. I hear the Hong Kong temple is beautiful.

Thought for the day:
"I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil." — Deuteronomy 30:15
"The Lord has left no doubt in defining His side and where the Saints should be in their thoughts, words, actions and practices. We have His counsel in the scriptures and in the words of the prophets. To ancient Israel, the Lord said through Moses: 'I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil' (Deuteronomy 30:15). The Lord counseled His prophet Jeremiah to instruct the people: 'Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death' (Jeremiah 21: 8). That is the contrast; that is the choice. Either we are on the Lord's side of the line or on the side of the adversary," said the late Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin during a CES ( Church Educational System) devotional on Aug. 2, 1992 (Ensign, March 1993).
"The line between those who are on the Lord's side and those who follow the adversary has been with us from the beginning. Even before the creation of this world ... [and] has persisted throughout the history of mankind and will continue until the day of judgment when Jesus comes again in His glory."
http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/61456/A-thought-from-the-scriptures.html