Here are some of the stories about how the money was used, in ways both large and small. The donors want to remain anonymous:
• I started a “Go-Fund-Me” website with my $20 and to date have raised $1,000 for the Village of Hope in Haiti.
• We quadrupled the $20 Advent gift we received in our brick and purchased a large gift basket which was delivered to the city of Delray Police Department with the note reading “Blue Lives Matter, you have our support and prayers.”
• We received $20. We are adding our own money and sponsoring and cooking a pancake and sausage breakfast for our “Bring a Friend to Church Sunday.”
• I am using my brick money as seed money to make “care bags” for the homeless: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, water bottles, cookies, toothbrushes, etc.
• I doubled my $20 brick money and sent it to Project HOPE for a special appeal which multiplied it 105 times, providing $9,450 in medical supplies.
• The $20 that was in my brick was matched with an extra $20 I had this past month. To date, I have been able to grow the original $20 into $160, with a promise of another $40 to add to it from my photo sales. This might not seem like much, but to someone on Social Security, I think it’s a lot.
• I deliver meals for Boca Helping Hands on Saturdays. I took the $50 bill I received in my brick and turned it into five $10 bills. I put $10 in five envelopes and gave them to five of the families I deliver meals to. I explained where the money came from and prayed with each family.
• We added $20 to the $20 and used that $40 to buy $79.80 worth of food at Publix (with buy-one-get-one and coupons) to donate to the food drive at my son’s elementary school.
• We used the money from our second brick to provide dinner to our local firehouse, Squad 54. I wish you could have been there to see how surprised and grateful they were. They had been out on calls all day and were wondering what they were going to do for dinner when we showed up. God is always in the right place at the right time! The owner of Davito’s was so impressed about our “Church Without Walls” campaign that he donated salad and rolls to go along with the meatballs and ziti.
• Wonderful Patty works shampooing clients at a modest hair salon and has for many years. She lives paycheck to paycheck and yet always has a beautiful, warm smile for clients, never complaining. If she is having a bad day, you would never know. She always thanks God for what she has and for her large family. Patty had tears in her eyes when I hugged her and gave her our “Tear Down the Walls” money.
• “We gave 4½ times our initial money to a single mom with a little girl who had surgery. She will be out of work for four weeks and does not get that much sick and vacation time so this will help with some of those days she won’t get paid for.
• We multiplied the amount received to make it a total of $140. We then put $20 in seven envelopes with the following note: “We were given a gift and we decided to share it with others. Please accept this $20 as a gift to you. May it make you smile and brighten your day. If this has brought you joy, please share these feelings with others!!” Then we went to Publix in Delray and (after clearing this with the assistant manager of the store) we walked around the store handing out the envelopes to people. Everyone was surprised. Of course, we were the ones who gained the most from this experience.
— Janis Fontaine
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