ELIZABETHTOWN — Start with a little sugar and flour, add a heart for helping other children, mix with a passion for telling others about Christ, and throw in a couple of 9-year-old girls, and you have the recipe for a good bake sale.

Friends Molly Hilton and Anna Gooden, while spending time together recently, started making crafts and offered to sell them to Molly’s parents, Dean and Jenna Hilton. After doing so and amassing quite a collection of quarters, they decided to branch out.

“They asked why they couldn’t just go big,” recounted mom Jenna. “We’ve always had conversations with our children about how fortunate they are to have a mom and dad and that not all children are that fortunate, so they know there is a need there. The girls came up with this idea to sell something to raise money for children who don’t have parents to take care of them. It was all their idea.”

The duo talked to a pastor and decided on the Boys & Girls Homes of North Carolina at Lake Waccamaw. Videos were made and posted online, flyers were distributed and advertised in media outlets, and donations came pouring in, all in the space of a week.

But the girls weren’t done. They decided to make it an act of ministry as well. Each item sold at the event had a sticker on it with I Timothy 4:12.

“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. I Timothy 4:12,” quoted Molly from memory, adding she had learned the verse at school. “Just because you’re young doesn’t mean you can’t tell people about Christ.”

On Saturday, downtown visitors were scooping up handfuls of tasty treats to take home.

“They were grabbing things up before we could even put them out,” said Jenna.

“I’m so glad they’re doing this,” said Anna’s grandmother, Faye Womble. “It just makes your heart swell.”

The timing for the event couldn’t be more fortuitous. On Wednesday, Children’s Home Society of North Carolina, the state’s largest private provider of foster care and adoption services, issued a press release.

“Foster care and adoption are in a state of crisis,” said Children’s Home Society President and CEO Brian Maness. “Foster care has been growing at an alarming rate with a shortage of permanent, safe, and loving homes for adoptable children.”

In North Carolina, the number of children in foster care increased every month in 2016 compared to the corresponding month in 2015, with over 2,400 children eligible for adoption.

“About five years ago, we had just over 8,000 children in foster care in our state,” said Maness. “Today, there are about 10,500 children in foster care, an increase of more than 25% in the last five years. That is a trend we would very much like to reverse.”

That reversal might just start with a couple of 9-year-old girls. Anna and Molly raised more than $1,200 — 100 percent of which will be donated to the Boys & Girls Homes.

“We’ve talked to them about the fact that most of the time, people work in order to help themselves,” said Jenna. “Working to help someone else who has a need is something there’s a reward in heaven for.”

Since 1954, Boys $ Girls Homes of North Carolina has been a sanctuary for hurting children — a safe place for young people who have been removed from their homes due to abuse, neglect or other family dysfunction. For more informaiton, visit boysandgirlshomes.org/. Additional information on the Children’s Home Society can be found by visiting chsnc.org/.

Chrysta Carroll can be reached by calling 910-862-4163.

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Youngsters work hard to benefit Boys & Girls Homes of NC

By Chrysta Carroll

ccarroll@civitasmedia.com