By Karin Elsen, UTO Board President and Chair of the Formation and Development Committee
Seasonal materials for fall
It is time to order your UTO materials for the fall! This year our materials are not date-specific, so you can use them whenever it makes the most sense for your congregation. The goal of our fall materials is to help all of us fall back into our gratitude routines, so we’ve created an updated five-minute gratitude journal based on feedback from users and fans of our first edition. For young people, we’ve got a cool sticker (if you order from the shop) and a five-week program to help connect things in our lives that we might be grateful for with recent UTO grants. (Note: While these were made for kids, they are easily adaptable to use with adults.) A big thank-you to a UTO leader who suggested this idea and was willing to give us time to develop it for everyone! We think that it will be a great resource for all congregations.
We’ve also updated our fall materials page to simplify finding the resources to download. We’ve created sections: individuals and families, congregations, and evergreen resources. We hope this will help everyone find what they are looking for without too much scrolling. We’ve created the evergreen section because we know sometimes you really love something we created in the past, and as long as it wasn’t overly connected to a date, we wanted to make that available to you. Find all fall resources at https://unitedthankoffering.com/fall/, or order your kit here: https://unitedthankoffering.com/shop/. Please note that we ask everyone to order by Sept. 18 so we can order the correct number of materials. Kits will ship after Sept. 29. If you need materials earlier, please email Heather (hmelton@episcopalchurch.org). If we have extra materials, they will remain available in the shop until sold out.
Order your diocesan convention kit now
If you are planning to have a booth at your diocesan convention, please order your materials as soon as possible. Each kit will include materials specifically designed for your diocese, and since that takes time to create, please give Heather as much lead time as possible to create the kit for your diocese. The theme for our kits this year is on UTO grants. We’re inviting people in your diocese to take a “leaf” from the tree that has information about a past UTO grant to your diocese and pray for that grant site. There’s also a QR code on the back of the leaf to update the story of the grant site as we prepare for the 150th anniversary of the first UTO collection and grants. You can order your kit here: https://unitedthankoffering.com/shop/
