Blessing Basket

Today we had a Primary activity at church to collect food for our ward's 'blessing basket'. The 'blessing basket' used to be called the 'Bishop's Hamper', but Bishop P. didn't like that name as it wasn't actually a hamper for him, so he asked the Primary kids to come up with a new name for it.

One Sunday we all brainstormed and the kids came up with some great ideas for a new name, some of which were very amusing. Suggestions included 'helping hamper', 'needy hamper', and 'food for the poor hamper'. We then talked about how you would feel if you were getting the hamper because you were needing some help, and decided that some names sounded better than others. Lisa asked the kids how they would feel if they were the ones given the hamper and Charlotte who is only 4 then said she would feel 'blessed'. From that we came up with 'blessing basket' which Bishop thought was a great name.

Usually ward members are just asked to bring food along to church to donate to the blessing basket, but we thought it would be fun as a Primary to go around to each members home and collect the food this year. We let the members know on Sunday what time we would be around.

After everyone arrived we split into four different cars and each car had a different area of the ward to collect from.

The older boys all said they were coming with me, and piled into the van. We collected in the St. Leonards area.


They had a great time jumping in and out of the van at each house and getting the food.


By the time we got back to the chapel we had a huge box full of food that was overflowing. The boys were eying off different items of food that we were given and were very tempted to sample it on the way back.

The other groups also got heaps of food and they all had a great time.

When we put it all in Bishop's office we had a HUGE box overflowing with food, gifts and even gift vouchers. The kids were really excited to see how much we collected.