Meeting life with a smile: Heavenly Smile celebrates 10 years
Published 9:45 am Friday, August 19, 2016
By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Staff Writer
CHELSEA – Heavenly Smile in Chelsea is hosting a 10-year anniversary brunch Saturday, Aug. 20 to celebrate all of their accomplishments and look forward to the future.
Heavenly Smile is a faith based non-profit organization that operates a community a food pantry, a Christmas project and financial literacy courses.
Normally they require anybody interested in receiving help to go through an application process, but during the summer months they have open pantry days where anybody is welcome to come and can receive goods on a first come first serve basis.
The last two of those dates this summer are Aug. 30 and Sept. 27 and their normal business hours are 1-5 p.m.
Kim Bradley, who is the founder of Heavenly Smile, said the brunch is meant to be a celebration and bring together a lot of people that have helped and donated to the organization over the years to celebrate such a great achievement.
“We appreciate the community, the county and city of Chelsea, we have a lot of great donors here,” Bradley said. “Community has unity involved and I think that has a huge impact on what we do.”
Heavenly Smile also does a Christmas project that takes on referrals for families that have needs at Thanksgiving and Christmas. They are put in touch with sponsors who provide them with food or buy gifts for those people.
“Sometimes we have families who just have an illness like cancer patients who aren’t up for going out and shopping,” Bradley said. “We just like to help people in any way that we can.”
They begin taking applications for the Christmas project the last week of September.
The brunch will take place from 10 a.m.-noon and anybody that wants to learn more information about the program is welcome to attend.
“A lot of people still think we are a dentist because of our name,” Bradley said. “We just want people to know what we do and learn about our organization. We won’t turn anybody away that wants to attend and know more about us.”
Bradley ended with a slogan that her grandfather started, “Life is much easier when you meet it with a smile.”