ROCKPORT, TEXAS
A couple of years ago, I moved from a very large ward in Colorado to a small branch in coastal South Texas. The Rockport Branch, Corpus Christi Texas Stake, is so small most members have several callings. A sister serving in Relief Society will often also serve in the Young Women program or Primary. We all have to work together to get our branch's needs met. Since the majority of the members are retirees, a lot of them travel a lot, and our ward is lucky to have 60 to 80 people in attendance on Sunday. My grandkids tease me and say that when they come to visit they triple the Primary.
Last fall our Relief Society presidency got together to try to figure out something to do for a service project. In the past, the little branch had done such things as making blankets for the elderly and caps for newborn babies. The previous projects required that we purchase the materials and have just a very few women with the skills to make them. We were looking for something that anyone would be able to participate in and feel like they had contributed. Even though we only had a handful of families in the branch, we wanted all of our sisters to be included.
Knowing that we were limited in numbers, but living in the South where it is usually warm most of the year and very conducive for garage sales, we decided to hold a garage sale and purchase items from the proceeds to make humanitarian kits for the Church.
We asked that our families start collecting all of their excess items, and we had a garage sale over a two-day period the weekend before Thanksgiving. The community as well as our members fully supported our sale, and we far surpassed our goal by more than $700 dollars. We shopped around and found the best prices for our kits in Utah. One of our sisters volunteered to save us $300 by picking the supplies up and bringing them back to Texas. We then had a potluck dinner and put the kits together. Again, so many people came it took us only 45 minutes to assemble 300 kits. The next week our branch president took them to the bishops' storehouse so that they would be available to send wherever they were needed.
We are a small branch family that pulls together and cares for our members. I have truly been blessed to find this wonderful place to live and associate with such great members.
