Christ the Redeemer Catholic Community held their first annual St. Nicholas Day outreach event
on Saturday, Dec. 7. Around 400 parishioners fanned out to 14 different venues working on 23
projects to do various different works of charity.
Volunteers were very busy. Many sites involved feeding groups of people lunch and frosting cookies, cleaning and painting, singing Christmas carols, organzing donations, and throwing a Christmas party for kids. Volunteers met at Bortz Nursing Center in Lake Orion, the Heritage Place of Lake Orion, Oxford/Orion FISH in Oxford, the Remnant Project Ministry in Lake Orion, the Baldwin Soup kitchen in Lake Orion, the Lake Orion Nursing Center, and also worked in Pontiac, Detroit, Oak Park and Southfield.
The St. Nicholas day at Christ the Redeemer came about after our pastor, Fr. Joe Dailey read an article about a Catholic parish in Cleveland that had extended the Christmas Giving Tree project into an even bigger outreach as part of their Advent preparation for Christmas. We adopted this approach and after months of preparation we had our first Parish Service Day Saturday, Dec. 7.
Multiple teams of people volunteered their time, including a pro-motion team who contacted local media, an administrative team, a hospitality and deocrating team, cookie angels who baked over 700 cookies, and volunteers who distributed over 1,000 fliers for the event.
By pre-arrangement with groups and agencies, people of all ages and backgrounds offered help and assistance to those in need. After spending some or all of the day in service, everyone returned to Christ the Redeemer to celebrate a communal Mass at 5pm. and a light dinner where food, companionship and stories were shared.