Bring on the Balloons!

Our own Molly Pitts founded a non-profit called Hope by Twelve http://www.hopebytwelve.org/mudula-water/ with the goal of empowering adolescent girls in situations of poverty. One of their main projects right now is to raise money to bring clean water to the village Mudula so that young girls will not have to miss school and other opportunities to fetch water.

Molly is going to Ethiopia next Friday, November 11. She will be visiting AHOPE for Children, a non-profit organization whose mission is to serve the children of Ethiopia, with a primary emphasis on caring for orphans infected with HIV. In Addis Ababa, AHOPE's two pleasant, well-staffed Children's Homes care exclusively for orphans who are HIV+ and have no extended family to care for them. Many of these children are now finding their forever families through adoption. AHOPE's Community Outreach Program enables orphaned children to remain within their extended families and culture, while receiving medical care, education, food, and other services. For information on how you can help, contact them at http://www.ahopeforchildren.org/

Molly plans to bring something "uplifting" for the kids. They gave her a list of items needed for donation and one of those items is balloons. She is bringing a little pump that blows up simple balloons - water balloons would also work.

So - if you'd like to donate a pack or two of balloons, bring them to the studio and leave them in the basket on the bench. She says she'll be able to fit A LOT into her bag!

Beads of Love

Thank you to everyone who donated beads for Martha and Steve. We had so many beads that we were able to make one full mala of 108 beads as well as 4 wrist malas - one for each member of their family. Although they were all very different, the beads came together beautifully. It wouldn't have have happened without Amy Margaret Kapphan at Beads of Bainbridge - I am so grateful for her expertise and her company - she even made me lunch!

It worked out that the beads, holy water from the Ganges and the card everyone signed in the studio were delivered on Monday which was also Martha's birthday. I am including the link to Steve's Community on Lotsa Helping Hands again so you can follow their progress. Martha is a wonderful writer and reading her posts is a pleasure. https://www.lotsahelpinghands.com/c/648543/

Stay tuned to hear more about how we can support Martha and Steve in the coming months.

Friends in Faraway Places

So a really great thing happened and I want to share it because it wouldn't have happened without this Karma Yoga group. Last Sunday when I checked my e-mail I found a message from a woman named Nancy who lives near Chicago. She had seen our blog (thank you Ann) and asked if she could still donate to the family we collected donations for at the October Kirtan. She said she had some family here on Bainbridge and had done yoga with Jen whom she considers one of her most influential teachers (of course!).

Then I saw Jen's October newsletter about spider webs and making connections - my favorite part was this: "What I'm learning from my spider friends and the web in the corner windows and what I learn on my yoga mat everyday is simple and sweet and true. Create magical strands of glistening connection in whatever corners you go in, be resilient and steadfast, sit for awhile in calm intention, then let go and move on." The e-mail from Nancy felt like proof of just those kinds of "glistening connection."

But the story goes on - today I received an e-mail from Nancy asking me to put a note in the card for Martha and Steve on her behalf. She met Martha at BYH years ago and then got to know her a bit better at the yoga retreat in Mexico last year. Then I got my mail - and there was a check from Nancy for $100.

October Meeting Summary

At Thursday's meeting we had Joyce, Helen, Susan Anderson, Susan Loftus, and Tijen. We talked about how we can continue to support Martha and Steve, especially when they return to the island. We put information on the Karma Yoga board about the Lotsa Helping Hands site so community members can follow their progress and send messages to them.

We talked about finding a holiday project for the Karma Yoga group and thought Helpline's Project Wishbone would be a helpful and simple place to start. We can put a basket in the studio for donations and a list from Helpline of the items they need for family Thanksgiving meals. Food donations can be delivered to Helpline on November 18 and 19. We also discussed the possibility of adopting a family or families for the winter holidays so that people could bring in items to share with them.

This month's Yoga Journal has an article about "medmobs" which are like flash mobs but with meditation instead of dancing. There is a medmob website people can check out at http://www.medmob.org/ . We thought it would be fun to hold one of these on Bainbridge, possibly at the ferry terminal during commuter times. The events usually consist of one hour of meditation followed by a 10 minute "soundbath" of chanting "om" - how cool would that be? Then we started to get really crazy and thought it would be fun to have a "yogamob" event during school hours on the high school campus.

Lastly, we talked about our hope to do something together as a group. One idea was to bake cookies together (Joyce offered her kitchen) and to share the cookies with the community - perhaps having them available to passersby at the medmob. We'd love to hear more ideas for ways we can work together as a group to help people in our community.

Our next meeting will be November 17 after yoga class at BYH.

Getting Support to Steve and Martha

You may have heard that Steve Prentice, a long-time member of our BYH community, had a serious fall over the weekend and is at Harborview. Since Saturday, he has had two surgeries on his back to repair damaged vertebra.

We want to let everyone know there is a card at the studio for all to sign and send their wishes and positive thoughts to Martha and Steve. We are also collecting beads to make malas for them both so if you have a bead or beads you’d like to donate, bring them in to the studio Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday this week. If you can't get to the studio but would like to donate some beads, comment here or e-mail Helen at hburke8@gmail.com. We'd like to deliver the card and malas to them later this week.

A Lotsa Helping Hands site has been created for friends and family to receive updates about how things are progressing. The site will eventually include a list so people can bring meals to the family and help them in other ways. The link to the site is https://www.lotsahelpinghands.com/c/648543/.

Martha – if you see this post I hope you know that we are all thinking of your family and sending you our love, positive thoughts and prayers. If there is anything we can do to help please don’t hesitate to ask.

October Update

If you were able to come to Kirtan last week then you know it was amazing - beautiful music, happy faces, kids, somersaults and footsteps in the hallways. If you couldn't be there, hopefully you can make it on November 3 for a Celebration of Light.

Thanks to a wonderful display of generosity that night, we collected over $350 in donations for the island family struggling with illness. Thanks to you all!

Our next meeting will be next Thursday, October 20 at 10:30 at BYH. Please come if you can - if you can't be there but have some ideas or questions, leave a comment here or e-mail hburke8@gmail.com.