Sunflower Mission joined efforts with Saigon Houston Radio, and other nonprofit organizations, to bring smiles to hundreds of children this holiday season. Annually, Saigon Houston Radio hosts a fun event for their young listeners at Funplex.

The children had competitions – singing, skating, etc…, rides, games, and food. For the first time this year, nonprofit organizations were invited to participate and also exhibit our work. The event took place over the weekend, Saturday December 18th.

We had a large and nicely decorated booth complete with Sunflower Mission’s mission, objectives, photos, and DVD of the workcamp in June, 2004. Dr. Nam Hoang and family donated 2 beautifully wrapped “goodies” packages, which were raffled off at noon and 12:30PM. We had many visitors that stopped by our booth to see our pictures and to drop off their children’s names into the raffle box. We also collected $175 in donations. Many thanks to Julie Nguyen for her commitment to stand by the booth and ask for donations. Great thank yous are also due to the University of Houston’s VSA organization led by Tuan Tran. It was the VSA’s commitment to work this event that made our participation possible. The VSAs sold their t-shirts, which netted $100 for Sunflower Mission. They also brought talented face painters and volunteers for our crafts table.

Thank you to all of our volunteers – UH-VSA (Tuan Tran, Dean Tran, Huyen Tran), Dr. Nam Hoang, Julie Nguyen, Chi Phuong Anh and Pauline, Chi Duy Loan Le, Dan Dao, Don Dao, Chi Thao Nguyen, Anh Cuong Nguyen, AiChi Tran, NaNhi Tran, Sarah Nguyen, Michelle Le and friend, and many others whose names I don’t know!

We painted over 200 faces – Christmas trees, sunflower, snowmen, various flowers and animals, Pokemon, football and Texans helmets… I cannot name them all! At our crafts table, children were able to make Christmas trees, angels, picture frames, book marks – either by themselves or with the help of one of our volunteers. After supplies were paid for, we netted over $100 in profit.

Our purpose for participating in this event was to promote Sunflower Mission and also to contribute to the community here in Houston that have generously supported us over the past 2 years. Our volunteers were kept busy, but everyone seemed to have fun and happy to add to the fun of the day.