{"id":112627,"date":"2026-01-21T18:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T02:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/?p=112627"},"modified":"2026-01-23T17:09:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T01:09:56","slug":"give-until-it-helps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/archives\/112627-give-until-it-helps","title":{"rendered":"Give Until It Helps"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cService is not just an altruistic expression of doing it for others. It is a divine expression of doing it for the God-loving force in you.\u201d
\n– John-Roger, DSS<\/em><\/p>\n

We helped raise $11,300 for Windermere\u2019s Garden!\u00a0 And as valuable as this money will be for Windermere, each of us who helped to organize the fundraiser got just as much value from the experience.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a J-R quotation, \u201cWork is love made manifest.\u201d\u00a0 We believe that service is also love made manifest. A small group from the Peace Theological Seminary\u2019s Doctor of Spiritual Science Transcendent Leadership program came together a year ago to support Windermere.\u00a0 As ministers and students, we were invited to choose one of six different areas to be of service: serving MSIA Nigeria, interviewing early MSIA students, supporting Windermere, supporting our Los Angeles MSIA family, supporting our MSIA family with limited mobility, creating an MSIA Death Caf\u00e9 experience. We also came to realize that Heartfelt is a wonderful resource for finding avenues of service as is each of our own communities.<\/p>\n

The four of us chose Windermere, each one of us holding a strong connection to the land and the mission of peace that it embodies. But, where were we to start?<\/p>\n

We interviewed David Whitaker, the ranch manager, and he described their long-range vision of developing sustainable agriculture. That led us to looking into different funding sources: Soil Conservation and Development, Small Livestock Management for Sustainable Farming Practices, The Regenerative Agriculture Foundation, Conservation Tillage and Cover Crops for Sustainable US Gardening. Yikes!<\/p>\n

We decided from the start that our best chance for success lay in meeting weekly to sustain the energy for however our service project would develop. And so we did: calling in the Light to start our meetings and concluding by each of us sharing a blessing of how we saw Windermere blossoming from our efforts. We brought David back in to review our discoveries. He educated us on how they were not a good fit at this stage for Windermere.\u00a0 It seemed like the Light was challenging our commitment.<\/p>\n

Undeterred, we pressed on.<\/p>\n

With the help of Windermere community resident Linda Whitaker (and core TL faculty member), we began to appreciate and focus on the needs of the garden. And Voila! The Light led us to the perfect funding source.\u00a0 One which sponsors raising funds from one\u2019s own community and one that specializes in raising funds for non-profit gardens. And one that is itself non-profit: SeedMoney.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SeedMoney.org has helped over three thousand community and school gardens and even awards grant money for successful fund raising.\u00a0 We encourage you to visit their website to read the inspiring stories of participating communities in North and South America, Africa and the Caribbean. (Seedmoney.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Following SeedMoney\u2019s guidelines, we developed our online fundraising platform with input from David.\u00a0 Once we had everything in place, we asked MSIAer Teri Breier, a social media maven, for her assistance. We were blessed by her expertise and dedication lining everything up for a successful campaign that ran from mid-November to mid-December.<\/p>\n

This has been a wonderful experience for each of us. We started with the unformed intention of supporting Windermere and ended (for now) helping to materialize a cash gift for the garden. Talk about fertilizing the carrots!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We had a lot of fun doing this and we\u2019re glad we raised our hands.\u00a0 We were surprised and overjoyed by the final result we were to witness.\u00a0 What a miracle!\u00a0 And all of you made it possible. Thank you.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Service is its own reward.\u00a0 One for which we are grateful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cService is not just an altruistic expression of doing it for others. It is a divine expression of doing it for the God-loving force in you.\u201d – John-Roger, DSS We helped raise $11,300 for Windermere\u2019s Garden!\u00a0 And as valuable as this money will be for Windermere, each of us who helped to organize the fundraiser […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":112629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[266,265,5397],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-institute-for-individual-and-world-peace","category-ministry-in-action"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}