Michigan—Students across Michigan joined forces with their teachers and others in their community to do their part in Hurricane Katrina relief for a Bible Labs project. Items such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, towels, soap, shampoo, and other personal hygiene items were desperately needed by hurricane victims. These items were collected and assembled into comfort kits.

Comfort kits for men included shaving cream and a razor. Comfort kits for women included many miscellaneous items from thread and needles to Band-Aids and first aid cream. Coloring books and crayons, puzzles, or small stuffed animals were added to the comfort kits made especially for children.

All the items making up the kits were packed with enthusiasm and love into large Ziploc bags. The students sometimes found it difficult to get everything to fit into just one bag!

When the Michigan teachers met in Lansing for an in-service day, they brought with them bags and boxes full of kits. These kits lined the sidewalk outside the Greater Lansing Adventist School.

God’s blessing was on this Bible Labs project. One teacher brought me a box of towels and some other items needed for the kits. “I am so sorry,” she told me, “we just were not able to afford to buy all the items needed to finish these kits." Tears filled my eyes when, just a few minutes later, another teacher from across the state handed me $60 as she said, “I am so sorry; my students raised money to make kits, but I did not have the time to buy the supplies.” God had just put together two schools to make complete kits!

A conference truck was needed to transport the kits to the office. A week later, seventh and eighth graders from Greater Lansing Adventist School, along with their teacher, Matt Kohls, arrived to sort, count, box, seal, and label the kits for shipment. Three hundred seventy-three kits were packed that day and have already been sent and distributed to those in need.

Some schools are still turning in kits. Currently, there are about 50 additional kits ready to ship out when another disaster strikes.

Thank you, young people! And thank you, adults, for your support in this project.

Linda Fuchs, Michigan Conference associate superintendent of education