Giving Back

UPDATE ON RANDOM CHANGE JAR (RCJ)

The money that we collected before the holidays ended up not being needed for the person that we were going to donate that money to.

We've been looking for a way to use the $110+ that we collected in a way that is both positive and can achieve the maximum effect for the $. What we've found is this:

There is a hispanic-American 3rd-grader in the Willow Springs community (Between Gardner and Angier) who has a rare disease that does not allow him out of the house very often. He cannot even attend public school and is forced to be homeschooled. The disease, Skins Crohn's Disease, is severely debilitating this child's life.

Partially because of the expense of this disease(treatments, doctors, tons of bandages), the family is having a hard time financially. Both because of his illness and his family's money situation, he misses out on common activities that we take for granted (he's never had a birthday party).

His birthday is coming up soon, and there is a group working on helping the family with that. Our plan is to take the money and get them gift cards to a grocery store to help free up some of their funds to focus on other needs. We hope that this gift will help not only the child, but the family as a whole!

If you still would like to give to this specific gift, please call or email Justin by wed. March 26th at noon! You can PLEDGE the money and by Wed. @ noon, and we will add it to the count out of our pocket. You then can reimburse us Thurs. when we meet, or call and we will make some other arrangements if you can't make it out Thurs. but would like to give.

EMAIL Justin cucamel@gmail.com

The money in the RCJ that we began collecting last month will not go towards this and instead will be left alone, continue to be collected, and will go to a future endeavor of the group's choosing.

Thanks again for your willingness to help, your conversations, and your friendships!
feel free to leave comments too!

love,
Justin and Alison

Questions On Suffering, Evil, Love and Justice

Possible topic this week as we look into recent headlines. The timeless questions on suffering, evil, death, war, Love, humanity, justice, etc... Here may be some starting points in the news recently.

Shooting of a gay middle-schooler by another middle-schooler.


A BETTER Video is found here on CNN.

Eve Carson's death, Student Body President for UNC.


Lauren Burk, 18, was found shot on a side road, and her car was found burning in an Auburn University parking lot.


See full story of both here!!

And of course we can't ignore the War in Iraq: From REAL NEWS

_________________________________________
Also don't forget the Questions project mentioned last post, and we are beginning the random change jar back up. If you have any place you would want our random change to go to in the next month or so, we are taking requests now!!!!

see you Thurs, or on the blog discussion!

A Questionable Project?

We want to begin a new activity in our discussion process. But we need your help!

What spiritual questions do you have in your own life?

these thoughts need to be heard, although we won't "Answer" them, perhaps we can spend some time discussing them. We are going to begin collecting these questions this week. Your job is simple. Start writing down ANY questions or doubts that you may have and we will have something to place them in this week. This will be an ongoing activity, and all questions will remain anonymous! All questions are valid and will be treated with respect!

I truly have missed you all and hope to see you this thursday@ 7:30. We will prob. go grab dinner after and anyone is invited to join us!

contact me for more info or questions!
on facebook or at divineconversations@gmail.com

peace and love.
Justin

Passionate Conversations

"Passionate Heart", by Marco Schmitt

Hey all!

We are glad to be back up and running with our conversation group again, now meeting on Thurs. at Southern Roast Coffee Co. in Holly Springs from 7:30-8:40 pm.

We are continuing to meet this week with a spicific topic in mind. We want to discuss what you are passionate about! What are the things lin life that you feel strongly about and what do you do about it. How are we each living out our passions?

This will be a good open topic that can go in endlsee directions. It will also open up the door for some other things that the group may do and discuss later on.

Hope to see you there!!!!

Meeting Again (Finally) This Week!!!

We apolojize for the delay in getting restarted after the holidays. We ran into some slight problems with our usual location. The good news is that we will begin meeting again on the 21st of Feb. Many people mentioned that thurs. nights would be better for them than wed., so we are moving to thurs. nights.

We are also moving locations. we will still be in holly springs about a mile or so from our previous coffee house spot. we will still meet from 7:30-8:30, so please try to get there before 7:30 so you can have your order filled and we can begin on time. Our new location is called Southern Roast Coffee. It is beside the Moravian Ch. in Holly Springs. Here's the website with address and you can get directions.

http://southernroast.com/

Thanks for your patience, and again we apolojize for the problems. But we are excited to get going again and perhaps have some new people join us as we continue to discuss where our spirituality meets reality!

INFO UPDATE

Hey all,
hope you guys had a wonderful holiday season.

Just wanted to let you all know that we will not be meeting this week (wed. Jan 9). We have run into a couple of issues with our location that we are trying to solve. We will get back together soon even if it happens in the basement of a house!!! Our conversations will get back on track soon.

In addition, we are looking at moving our meeting nights to Thursdays instead of Wed. Several people have mentioned that this would be a better day for them. Please leave some feedback on that idea!

Stay tuned, and we'll keep you updated on what's going on. Thanks for your patience and we can't wait to see everyone again.

Peace and Love,
admin

Announcement: Thanksgiving and Christmas

We aren't meeting this week!!!!
But will be back on the 28th! Recap is below from last week and feel free to add your thoughts on there someone mentioned continuing that conversation on the 28th, but that's up to you guys if we stay on that topic. I think that it was stated that we would like to get more of your thoughts from those that couldn't be there!

We talked this past week about having a Christmas/holiday get together before all the college students had to go home. We will continue to meet in Dec. and those that return home can keep up with us on line! We talked about having instead of like a Random Gift Exchange Party (some of us are broke and jobless...yes, me!) but instead having a Random CHANGE Party. We can host it at our place, but the idea is to begin collecting random change and bring that to the party instead of a gift. We will have food and fun stuff going on, but will collect All of the change and decide that night one place/orginization/charity/w/e to send it all to! It's our gift to each other...giving back to our world! So, if you have a suggestion of an orginization print up some info and bring it that night!

We're looking at Dec. 5th. we need some feedback on that since we don't know exam schedules and such! Let us know, I'll post the info as soon as we decide. All are invited. Email us if you have any questions!