33 Hope in Every Bag: From Calvary Church to Community Hearts

Podcast Description:

Join me, Vickie Siculiano, on a heartfelt journey of compassion, triumph over adversity, and the true spirit of community service. Imagine standing in a room filled with love, unity, and the tangy aroma of freshly packed onions. As I maneuvered my wheelchair, battling MS, we together packed Bags of Hope with delectable turkey and ham dinners at Calvary Church. The inspiring leadership of Pastor Matt Batista fostered an atmosphere of inclusion and we all became a beacon of hope for others.

As we packed every bag, I reflected on the transformative power of giving back and the profound impact it has on both, the giver and the receiver. Battling MS never stopped my journey towards making a positive impact. Instead, it has become a source of inspiration for others. As we wrap our hearts around Thanksgiving and the holiday season, let’s remember to find time for self-care and cherish the moments we spend with our loved ones. Remember, someone somewhere is waiting for a bag of hope from you. Let’s keep that spirit alive, spread the love, and don’t forget to leave a review. Can’t wait for you to join us again next time on our chronically empowered journey.

Podcast Transcript:

Certainly! Here’s the transcript divided into paragraphs for easier reading:

Hi and welcome to the Chronically Empowered Mom Podcast, your source for energy and inspiration. I’m Vicki Sicliano, motivational coach, certified personal trainer, former jazz vocalist, and a multiple-time Amazon published author. My mission is to empower you to be the best version of you, no matter what stage of life or if you have a chronic illness like me. Ready to rewrite your story and be the best version of you, let’s dive in.

Hello there, and welcome to another episode of the Chronically Empowered Mom Podcast. I am your host, Vicki Sicliano, and I am super excited that you’re here today because I have something very different that I want to share with you. So yesterday, I had the opportunity to volunteer in a Bags of Hope project with Calvary Church.

Now, Calvary Church is a Christian church here in town where I live in Wayne, New Jersey, and they have opened their arms to us very welcomely when I wanted to send my son, Sean, to camp there, because he’s very close to the church where he goes to school and a lot of the kids from the school go there for church, for camp. So he was more comfortable knowing that he would have his friends there than just going to some random camp. We did try it a couple of years ago at our local Y, not to say anything bad about the Y, but it was just a very busy experience. My son had a little trouble navigating crossing paths with other troops that were going through the halls on the way to some other activity. I’m sure it was an awesome activity, but it was just a little too much for him. So we sent him to Camp Calvary this summer, and it was such a hit.

So we figured, you know, why not send him to the church there? Because he did a lot of devotions at church there. He had some Bible classes, and although I am Jewish by birth, I have nothing against having my son learn about being kind and living a human life, being good to others, and serving. I really believe that it was a good place to be and they welcomed us with open arms.

So we went to church, and we have done some non-for-profit good work with them. We did bagging for food for them a couple of weeks ago because they have a line that forms every week with people from nearby counties, not just Wayne, and they feed, they have a kitchen, they do other amazing things there. It’s a truly amazing organization and they have fellow missions around the world and they just do great work. So I wanted to do what I could to bring Sean into it and get him involved in this big event, Bags for Hope. I truly didn’t know what it would amazing experience it would be until we got there and personally helped on our own.

So this event was for making bags filled with complete turkey dinners or ham dinners. They had the choice of a ham or a turkey and all the fixings. So they were cans of string beans and cans of cranberry sauce and corn and all kinds of stuff, including boxes of stuffing and bags of rice and pasta. And there was even pancake mix floating around there, just making sure that people get fed for the holidays and doing good for others. It really did not matter what religion you were. Everybody there was welcome. They just had to provide their driver’s license and they had to register before the event and prove their worthiness For receiving such an amazing donation.

So let me set the scene for you. So they have a gymnasium at the church and at the church this gymnasium is open for events that they have there. There is also the camp. There is also school where kids go. So it’s just amazing, you know they they opened up their gym and they had tables set up and they divided out all of these things that would be in this package that was being assembled and then to be distributed at the end of the event.

So when we went previously to donate our time to help pack bags for the needy on their weekly food drive, it wasn’t an event where we could see it to full fruition. So my son was really excited when he was able to see the line forming and people coming up and getting all of the stuff that he worked so hard to get to happen. It was truly a heartwarming and fulfilling experience.

So there was an opening prayer by Pastor Matt. Pastor Matt Batista is their pastor and everybody there worships him like he is God and he truly is an amazing spirit and he is there with me at the gym, which is where I met him actually, and he just closed his eyes, even after surgery that he received last Friday for his eye. He had a detached retina, sounds horrible and I think that the truly is, but he got through it after 80 hours of facing down so that his eye would heal. After

the surgery. He’s been through a lot, but he’s gonna come back from this, I completely believe.

Okay, so he said an opening prayer, eyes closed. Everybody’s eyes were closed, heads down, and we all just felt his presence and it was an amazing experience being there. So he got everybody supercharged and we were all ready to donate our time and be there with each other.

So one thing that I want to say was that it was very inclusive. Knowing that I have mobility issues and I use two crutches to ambulate and get around, he made sure that they had a chair for me so that I could sit and still pack bags. I was actually on onion packing duty at the sweet potato onion table and the job was to put them in a, oh, it’s like a produce bag, but they didn’t kind of plastic bag, and then it needed to be tied with a knot, air squeezed out so they could fit as many as they could in a cart. And then there was the job of counting them all, and I’m gonna get back to that in second.

So we had to make these bags. There was onion skin everywhere it was. It was truly a display and I had no problem with that. I was just worried that I was gonna cry, but apparently onions do not bother you unless you cut into them. There was nothing like that going on there, so certainly no cooking.

So we we packed all the bags that we needed to to fill this cart and then we were given another bag to get going. Now my son has autism. He is highly functioning. He is a math genius. Yes, he’s that kid. If you ask him to add up something or multiply or subtract, division, anything, he’s got it. On third grade. Now they’re working on multiplication and division, so he’s super excited about that because he’s like the star champ in his class.

He was, he was good to go, and at our table there was a kid who was in math honors in ninth grade and another kid. They were both good, they were excellent with with Sean and we were all working together. We were our family at our table and they were asking him multiple location and division questions and before I knew what Sean was talking about 10 squared being a thousand and being a hundred. See, I’m not the math genius that he is. I don’t know. I don’t know where he gets it from. I was good, but just not as good as him. He’s exceptionally a bright, so so that’s what Sean was on. Sean was on packing duty and he would just like kind of run around and flow, but he was definitely on his counting duty and very happy.

One thing that they also had him on after we all packed up our onions and sweet potatoes, was they put us on a distribution area where they were the people coming up and getting four of their selection of items and putting it in a bag, moving up so that they could get in line to have their stuff taken out to their cars when they would receive a free turkey or ham.

So Sean was put on the duty of helping to fold these cards that were made on the printer in the office. So these cards were Thanksgiving cards and they had a couple of psalms in there from the Bible. I don’t recall which ones they were, but it was a Thanksgiving card and it was just to give them a warm wish for the holidays for their family. And Sean was very happy to count them all and divide them into pack little packages of 24.

So he was quite happy to do that and I’m going to put pictures on on my website. I’m not sure if I’m going to do a blog post or if I’m going to put this in with the Podcast that post, the show notes. I think I’m going to do a separate blog post on it. I’m just kind of talking this out because I don’t want to lose this memory. I know that it kind of fades as time goes on. So right now it’s the day after the event. It is Sunday, so the event was Saturday and what I’m doing is sitting in front of a microphone and recording this.

Truth be told, I did this in my car this morning. I came out from the gym after seven, after it was after nine, so I finished at seven, I started at seven, I wrapped up at nine, then I went into my car with my wireless microphone and I went to record and I thought the recording button was pushed, but it was not. So, look, it was practice. It wasn’t a long time. I really don’t intend for my podcast to be longer than 20 to 30 minutes now, because I really want to focus on some other things that I’m trying to build and work on.

Okay, so that’s the scene. So I was in the gym, we had this opening prayer and, because of my disability, I