SHENANDOAH - Trinity Academy students presented a donation to the Missionary Childhood Association on Friday to help children through their prayers and sacrifices.
Kim Ann Zardet, director for the Missionary Childhood Association in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown, was on hand to accept the donation of $479.53 at Annunciation BVM Roman Catholic Church, from Maggie O'Rourke and Sofiya Pitula, who will be the school's missions representatives as eighth-graders in the 2014-15 school year.
The Missionary Childhood Association is one of four Pontifical Mission Societies. It has a dual mandate of educating children about their part in the Catholic Church's missionary work and challenging them to share what they have with children growing up in mission countries.
The total amount raised by the school was $748.07, with the remaining $268.54 donated to Catholic Relief Services to help the victims of Typhoon Haiyan, which cut across nine regions in the central Philippines on Nov. 8, 2013, leaving behind a wide swath of destruction and causing 6,300 deaths.
The children attended the First Friday Mass celebrated by the Rev. Johnson Kochuparambil, after which third-grade teacher Kim Kringe, who is the school's missions coordinator, introduced Zardet to the students and faculty.
"I'm from the Allentown diocese and I travel to schools and religious education programs to speak about the missions and how you are children helping children throughout the world," Zardet said. "There are 110 countries that you support with all your prayers and sacrifices. Your prayers are so, so needed in helping these children because we are so fortunate to have things that we take for granted: electricity, water, food, things like that, even a warm bed to sleep in. Some children are not fortunate enough to have what we have. Being young, you probably think that everyone lives like you do, and they don't. When you make those sacrifices, you can help people all around."
When O'Rourke and Pitula were called to the sanctuary, Zardet presented each with a wooden cross blessed by the Most Rev. John O. Barres, bishop of Allentown, and a World Mission rosary.