Westminster
HomeFor many folks at Westminster, Christmas gift giving is synonymous with Heifer International. For several years now, we have had a fall event to enable us to purchase "shares" of an animal, complete with gift card, to honor someone at Christmas. Of course, this opportunity is not limited to Christmas gifts -- you can purchase shares anytime! The gift also multiplies because the first offspring of each animal is passed on to another family in the community in a moving "Passing of the Gift" ceremony.
We recently received a plaque from the Heifer International Gift Market in recognition of our donations in 2006, which came to $7,670.00! The plaque is currently on display in the Schilling Gallery. Plaques are awarded in recognition of donations exceeding $4,000 (the cost of purchasing an Ark). Our plaques for 2005, 2004, and 2003 are displayed in the stairwell leading downstairs to the children's education wing. The World Service Ministry Team, along with the Westminster congregation, will strive to continue this wonderful gift-purchasing/gift-giving ministry for years to come -- "fighting hunger two-by-two," as they say!
The Heifer Project International spent more than half of the twentieth century alleviating hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation by helping communities become self-reliant for food and income. Providing livestock and training to hungry families is HPI's unique approach that originated with one simple idea: not a cup, but a cow.
During the Spanish Civil War, Heifer International founder Dan West served as a relief worker, handing out cups of powdered milk from America to children on both sides of the conflict. When the supply ran out but the line of hungry children didn't, he reasoned, "If families had a dairy cow, they could be spared the indignity of depending on others to feed their children." His friends back home agreed. Virgil Mock donated the first calves. Claire Stine raised them. Roger Roop gave his farm as a holding center. In 1944 the first shipment of 17 cows left York, Pennsylvania, for Puerto Rico, going to families whose malnourished children had never even tasted milk before. Over the years HPI has touched the lives of more than four million families in 128 countries.
Updated 4/22/2007