Mid-Michigan High Schoolers For Haiti

When the Student Leaders from our High School Youth Group, Modified, decided to challenge one another to a little peanut butter competition, I’ll bet they didn’t expect this to happen.

Their original plan: for Grand Ledge High School to challenge Everett High School to see which school could collect the most peanut butter to send to Haiti. Our students talked to their respective administrators and student councils and began collecting Jif and Peter Pan.

Then one student decided to call 97.5 Now-FM to see if they would be willing to donate a prize to the winning school. 97.5 called back and asked, "If two schools can do this, why can’t all 28 high schools in the Tri-County area do it?" An idea was sparked and soon Mid-Michigan High Schoolers For Haiti was born.

Here is how it will work. Beginning tomorrow morning, Citadel Broadcasting will begin talking about Mid-Michigan HS4Haiti on their flagship station, 97.5, as well as their other five affiliate stations. They are issuing a two-fold challenge – to give money to the American Red Cross, and to give "hard goods," from the list that we have printed on our church’s website.

Here’s the thing: all of the hard goods that are donated by the 22,000 high school students AND Citadel Broadcasting's 400,000 weekly listeners will come through our doors before being sent to Northwest Haiti Christian Mission. Yes, you read that correctly.

It is entirely possible that we will be looking at over 100,000 jars of peanut butter and Tylenol and anti-biotic ointment and . . . well the list is pretty long actually.

In other words, this is going to be huge.

97.5 will run the contest for the entire month of February, and they are making a substantial contribution to seeing that it succeeds. The winning schools (there are three categories based on enrollment) will each receive a cash grant that they can use to bless a not-for-profit in their own community. In addition, the winning school will play host to an exclusive live concert in their own gym or auditorium hosted by 97.5 morning deejay Josh Strickland and an up-and-coming regional band.

They are also planning to visit school assemblies, and have live broadcast remotes planned throughout Mid-Michigan to promote this event.

This is going to be huge – did I mention that already?

What can we do? Soon we’re going to be buried under an avalanche of Haiti supplies. We’re going to need a massive turnout of people on short notice to count, sort and repackage these items to ship to Haiti.

This Sunday we will give you specific instructions for how you can help with this effort.

Until then, please pray. God is already doing "immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine," with this project. (Let me just add that I am so proud of our Student Leaders and our Youth Minister, Chad Cronin. Their out-of-the-box thinking is going to save lives in Haiti!)

That’s all for now. Just get the word out. Listen to 97.5 tomorrow morning from 6 AM - 10 AM to get the early word on what is happening. Facebook this information. Find the links on the 97.5 webpage and put them on your Twitter and your blogs. Get the word out, and then watch what God does.