Please make a charitable donation of a unit of your blood this Lenten season.  One unit of blood can save up to three lives.

The Knights of Columbus Council 1369 will be hosting the next SSPP / St. Raphael blood drive on Saturday, March 19^th, 2011, in SSPP’s Zuker hall (the lower level of the junior high building) from 7:00 am until 12:30 pm.  Appointments can be made online at http://iwebb.heartlandbc.org/pls/iwebb/adrv?pdz=75038&pdr=DRV2011783, or by contacting Eddie Collins at (630)946.6444.  Donating only takes an hour, and refreshments will be available for all donors.  Walk-in’s will be welcome after 9:00 am.  Please advise if you plan on being a walk in donor.

New donors are greatly needed!  Please contact us immediately!

If for some reason you will be unable to donate on March 19^th , you can do so at one of Heartland’s sixteen Chicagoland donor centers.  The Naperville center is in the Market Meadows Shopping Center just south of Jewel Osco at 1248 S. Naper Blvd..  You can either walk-in or make an appointment by calling 630-428-3632.  Heartland’s office hours are Monday – Thursday 11:30 am – 7:00 pm; Friday 8:00 am – 3:30 pm; and Saturday 7:00 am – 3:30 pm.  If you donate during the month of March and give the receptionist SSPP’s “Sponsor Code” of 100918 we will receive credit for your donation.

Please make a charitable donation of a unit of your blood this Lenten season.  One unit of blood can save up to three lives.  Donating is a real act of love.

Council 1369 will host their second and last blood drive of the year on Saturday, September 25^th in SSPP’s Zuker Hall.  Heartland Blood Center will once again be drawing the blood.  The hours of the drive are from 7:00 AM until 12:30 PM.  Walk-in’s are welcome after 9:00 AM.

As in the past, many volunteers will be needed both as donors and workers to make the drive a success.  Sixteen Knights have already stepped forward and volunteered to call previous donors seeking donation appointments.  Additional workers will be needed on Friday, Sept. 17^th to stuff fliers in Mass bulletins, at least two Knights will be required to sign up donors after each Mass at SSPP the weekends of Sept. 11 & 12, and 18 & 19, and a couple Knights are needed to work the event itself.  Twenty three 1369 Knights donated blood at our March drive.  Hopefully, an even larger number will donate at this drive.  Requests to fill each of these needs will be broadcast over our web site.  If you can help, please – please do so.  Don’t assume someone else has answered the call and ignore the request, because so often they haven’t.

Donating blood and working on the drive are some of the most important charitable activities that we as a council perform.  One unit of blood, when broken down into its components of red blood cells, platelets, and plasma has the potential of saving as many as three lives!  Those lives could be yours, that of a member of your family, a neighbor, or a brother Knight.  All of the blood collected by Heartland at our drive will stay right here in our area at Edward, Central DuPage, and Rush – Copley hospitals to name only a few.  Heartland has been the exclusive supplier of blood to Edward for years.

So, if you can, please sign up to make a blood donation.  If for some reason you will be unable to donate on Sept. 25, you can donate at Heartland’s center in the Market Meadows Shopping Center between Sept. 1 and Oct. 10, give the receptionist our sponsor code of 100918, and we will receive credit for your donation.  The need is great.  If you have any questions, or would like to volunteer to help with the drive please contact Darrell Hutton at 630-961-0526 or darrell.hutton@sbcglobal.net.

We can use some help again this weekend, at SSPP, with our after Mass blood donor sign-up.  Listening to the weather report, it sounds like we will be standing inside for most of the Masses.  We don’t have anyone signed up for the 5:00 pm on Sat. or the 6:30 am, 8:00 am, 9:30 am, 12:30pm, or 5:30 pm all on Sun. at the church.  If you can help with any of these Masses please contact Darrell Hutton at 630-961-0526 or darrell.hutton@sbcglobal.net ASAP.