The Positive Page-turner's Challenge: Take 21

The Positive Page-turner’s Challenge: Take 21

June is quickly coming to an end, and here I finally am with my next Positive Page-turner’s Challenge of 2025. I won’t guarantee it, but I hope to have a third one this year. I haven’t been buying as many books – the increased prices of everything affects us all – so it’s taking me longer to accumulate the number for my Challenges. (P.S. These are new books only, not any I’ve checked out from the library or obtained secondhand.)

            With 17 books in the photo, I will donate $5/book. I have written out a check for $85 to go into my home church’s Altar Guild Fund during tomorrow’s Offering.

            There is no judgment if your coffers are running on empty, and it’s all you can do to pay your bills and keep food on the table. I’ve seen the positive results of kind words, encouraging conversations and polite gestures, so if you can be that bright spot in someone’s day, I hope you’ll take the spotlight. For those who can donate time and/or money, I encourage you to do so. There are so many worthy causes waiting for amazing donors like YOU to come along!

The Positive Page-turner's Challenge: Take 20

The Positive Page-turner’s Challenge: Take 20
This should’ve been a post in December, but I had church offering that needed to go to other causes (e.g. Toys for Tots donations) and so pushed this off into the new year. On the plus side, I feel confident that I will achieve one more Positive Page-turner’s Challenge this year.
            As I’ve done for awhile now, I will be donating $5/book in this picture. 17 books seems to be my magic number. I will be donating $85 to my home church’s Sunday School Fund. It will go in as a gift by The Reading Rutabaga in February.
            Especially after the holidays, most of our financial belts feel stretched thin, but I still encourage any readers to contribute what you can. If not with money, then volunteer time. If time is stretched thin, too, consider saying a kind word at the checkout or help someone reach something on a shelf if you’re able. For instance, I’m no help getting things off the top shelf (unless I climb it), but if you need someone to squat down and grab that can off the bottom shelf, I’m your person! Let’s make humanity look good in ways big and small. Be kind to one another! <3

The Positive Page-turner's Challenge: Take 19

 

The Positive Page-Turner’s Challenge: Take 19

Finally! We’re halfway through 2024, yet I’m only now posting my first Positive Page-turner’s Challenge of the year. I did have it ready last month, but I didn’t want it to overshadow my Reading Challenge that I completed in May, so I’m posting this over a month later.

            Keeping to my theme, $5 is the special donation for each book in this picture. With 17 books, I donated $85. I already wrote a check a week ago to my local church’s Haiti Fund.

            I know that sometimes our budgets may be stretched too thin to contribute financially to organizations, but I’d like to believe that anyone happening upon this post is someone who donates in whatever way one can at the time. Time is a donation, just as $5 or $500 or $1M is a donation. Please do what you can, and I will continue to do so, too. The world isn’t always so great, but we can help make it a little better!

The Positive Page-turner's Challenge: Take 18

The Positive Page-turner’s Challenge: Take 18

Look at that, we’re in the final month of 2023, but I’ve managed to compile enough personally purchased books to present a third Positive Page-turner’s Challenge for 2023 and my eighteenth overall. I’ve found 17 books to be my perfect number for setting up my little book photo shoots, so there are 17 books in this photo. At $5/book, I donated $85 to my local church. It went in this past Sunday’s offering plate, and I designated it to the General Fund, to be used as the church needs.

            “Delivering Hope Through Bars of Soap” is my motto when it comes to my unofficial Special Project for Haiti. If you refer to Take 16, you’ll discover that donating soap’s turned out to be a bigger help than I imagined. Recently, a box of soap I’d filled got sent with a trailer full of donations, including boxes of donated health kits, layette kits and three pallets of food. My box of bar soap came to 19.4 pounds.

            What compassion projects are you passionate about?

The Positive Page-turner's Challenge: Take 17

Here’s my second Positive Page-turner’s Challenge of 2023 and my 17th overall. This photo contains 17 books. With 17 books in the photo, I will again donate $5/book. My total to donate this time around is $85. I donated it to the General Fund at my local church.

            Back in June (June 12, to be exact), a box of bar soap that I’d accumulated got sent to Iowa, where it was put on a shipping container with plentiful other donations to be sent to Haiti, including three pallets of meals packed by volunteers with Real Hope for the Hungry (that equates to around 22,000 total meals). I’ve mentioned this before and expect I will many times more, but I buy Ivory soap. However, they will not turn down bar soap donations of any kind. Please remember to package full bars and not the little hotel bars. The box I sent along was smaller. But 23.2 pounds is better than nothing at all!

            A note regarding soap: I prefer to remove the outside packaging on the soap, keeping the soap in their individual boxes/wrappers. I like to pack the soap in boxes that have plenty of space for me to write Bar Soap on multiple sides. I also use a strip of neon colored duct tape after taping up the box to note where it’s going. The soap I send typically goes to the Birthing Center, but has also been designated for the Consolation Center.

            What sorts of compassion projects do you support?

The Positive Page-turner's Challenge: Take 16

It’s my first Positive Page-turner’s Challenge of 2023, but my 16th overall. As you can see from the accompanying photo for this post, there are 18 books ranging from children’s poetry to inspirational fiction novels for adults.

            With 18 books in the photo, I am going to donate $5/book. The total will amount to $90, and the money will be donated to my home church. I am as yet undecided if it’ll go into the Haiti Fund or if I’ll change it up and donate it to one of the other funds like Sunday School, Altar Guild or Building.

            While not buying packages of soap for every single book I read, I am back to buying bar soap for GoServ Global and their work in Haiti. After taking most of last year “off” from purchasing extra soap due to the unrest there and being unsure if shipments would (A) get shipped out and (B) make it to the sites GoServ serves, I’m back at it. I learned in the recent past that they did depend on the soap previously sent. It surprised me to learn that I sent almost all of the bar soap that was donated to Haiti. The soap that wasn’t bought by me was donated by one of my childhood friends. It was after my parents heard from a co-founder and small-craft pilot that he had to go buy bar soap in Florida and fly it to Haiti that I realized the soap IS helpful. It’s such a small thing and easy to take for granted, but it’s so useful. Their uses for bar soap go beyond bathing only. I will keep delivering hope through bars of soap!

The Positive Page-turner's Challenge: Take 15

It surprises me, too, that I’m already back with my 15^th Page-turner’s Challenge post. I’ve been accumulating these novels long enough that I have managed to read half of them, so I’ll take that victory. What are you reading right now? Any books that you would recommend?

            Like with my most recent Challenges, I donated $5 per book. There are 17 books in this picture, so $85 was donated to my home church. The donation went to the Haiti Fund.

            I normally include an additional piece, whether it’s donating physical items (like to the local Salvation Army at Christmastime) or volunteering with an organization (like participating in food packs) or donating extra money. I wasn’t planning on including an additional piece, but the additional found me! The middle of last week, I was at my parents’ house helping box up donations being sent to Haiti. My dad hauled down two pallets of medical supplies, health kits, baby layette kits and miscellaneous baby clothes. I think he took down more than just what was on the pallets. The donations sent this round included the last two boxes of Ivory bar soap I had in my house. (Total soap sent in pounds is listed in the Comments section below.)

             I’d love to hear what you’re doing. Are you donating of time and/or money and/or tangible goods? With crises going on the world over (that the news may or may not report on and whether the crises are local, national or international), do you find yourself wishing you were doing more or able to do more? What is your passion project, if you have one?

The Positive Page-turner's Challenge: Take 14

Ever since I started my Positive Page-Turner’s Challenges, I’ve purchased a package of bar soap (8-10 bars/pack) for every book read, chapter books on up. This has had to change, based on two factors: (1) I was told that I didn’t currently need to purchase soap to send to Haiti and (2) I’d been having trouble finding the brand I prefer stocked in local stores. January 2022 was my last month for purchasing soap, but it took me until early March to fulfill it (I needed 10 packages).

            So, what does this mean? I will, undoubtedly, continue my Challenges. For this first one for 2022, I will donate $5 for every book in this picture. With 17 books in this picture, the total amounts to $85. The money will be donated to my church’s Altar Guild fund.

            The bonus piece of my challenge was making a second donation to my home church. I wrote “LDR Eastern Europe Crisis,” on the Memo Line, as indicated that we should. That money went specifically to Lutheran Disaster Response. They respond to disasters both domestic and international. This money will go toward helping those in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. The amount I donated was $50, but remember all amounts - large or small or anywhere in between - add up to aid A LOT of people!

            What have you been up to? What are you reading?

The Positive Page-turner's Challenge: Take 13

Hello, Book Dragons! If triskaidekaphobia is something you struggle with, you’ll want to skip this post. This should be evident from part of the title – Take 13 – but use this as another reminder in case the title was overlooked. For me, 13 is my favorite number, so reaching this goal in my Positive Page-turner’s Challenges feels wonderful.

            As is customary, I will donate a package of bar soap for every book that I read, chapter books on up. Like with all other products, the 10-bar packs of Ivory soap have gone up, but I will continue with that brand, not only because it’s more economical for me, and I buy A LOT of Ivory soap, but it’s a gentler soap for babies and those with sensitive skin. Like I’ve mentioned before; however, they will not turn away bath-sized bars of soap of any kind.

            Normally, I have an additional feature in a Positive Page-turner’s Challenge, but I don’t have one this time. My extra feature from The Positive Page-turner’s Challenge: Take 12 is still ongoing, and Toys for Tots donations are already a regular line item in my Christmas budget each year.

            Happy reading, my friends! Have a safe, healthy and fun holiday season!

The Positive Page-turner's Challenge: Take 12

Hello, my fellow readers! What have you been reading this year? Are you meeting your reading goals? I’m back with the 12^th Edition of my Positive Page-turner’s Challenge. I introduced my first Challenge in November of 2016. It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost five years!

            As with all of my previous Challenges, I will donate one package of bar soap for every book that I read, chapter books on up. I have been donating Ivory brand soap, and I only ever get the 10-bar packs. Other brands are welcome, too, but as the soap is most often being donated to women at GoServ Global’s Birthing Center in Haiti and their newborn babies, gentler brands or those soaps marked as being for sensitive skin are ideal. They will not; however, turn away full bar soaps of any brand.

            For the extra feature of my Challenge, instead of donating a one-time amount of money per book, I am going to do something a little different. Including the picture book in the above photo, there are 18 books. With that number in mind, I will be completing a combination totaling 18. This will include individual events (e.g. donating money to an organization, purchasing a material item to support an organization) and donations of time (e.g. packing food). Let’s say that I donate $50 to a local charity and volunteer at the local Humane Society for two hours. This would be 1 event + 2 hours of time = 3 total. So, in that case, I would have 3 of 18 books represented.

            I will be tracking these events and donations of time in the Comments below. It’s not to brag or be prideful, but to hold myself accountable. I don’t know if it’ll take me the rest of the year to complete this or into next year, but it WILL get accomplished! If you support organizations with time and/or financial support, please share which organizations those are and why you support them. Keep spreading love and kindness!

The Positive Page-turner's Challenge: Take 11

For this edition of my Positive Page-turner’s Challenge, the first of 2021, I will continue to donate one package of bar soap for every book that I read, chapter books on up. Each package of soap will again contain 8-10 bars per package. For anyone curious, the brand I typically send is Ivory, but GoServ Global will not turn away full bars of soap of any brand. (For example, Dove is a nice brand, but it’s pricey in comparison.)

            Regarding my add-on to this Challenge, I will be donating $5 for every book featured in this picture. There are 18 books, so $90 will be donated to my home church of Trondhjem. It will be donated to the Haiti Fund.

            If your heart is likewise turned toward helping others close by or far away or any distance in-between, please share in the Comments. It can even be an idea of what you’d like to do or a dream project you’d like to come to fruition over time.