TODAY'S RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS; KINDNESSES NOURISH THE SPIRIT

Students at Cape Girardeau Central Junior High School discovered Thursday that kindness can be sweet.

Four women at Grace United Methodist Church baked more than 1,600 chocolate chip and sugar cookies in the church kitchen. The cookies were distributed to junior high students Thursday.

It took Mary Ann Pensel, Aileen Mantooth, Janice McClelland and Jan Kinsey about 10 hours over three days this week to bake all the cookies.

Pensel said the task wasn't a daunting one for her. "I taught the commercial food program at the vo-tech school," said the retired teacher. "I mixed up the dough and pulled out that old chocolate chip recipe."

The cookies were bagged - two to a bag -- and then handed out to eighth- and ninth-graders during lunch at the school cafeteria.

Pensel said she and others at the church wanted to be neighborly as part of Random Acts of Kindness Week. The church sits just north of the school.

Each bag contained a small slip of paper that read: "You have been hit with a Random Act of Kindness from Grace United Methodist Church."

Mary Marlow, director of youth ministries at the church, handed out the bags of cookies as did church member Caroline Tilghman.

Marlow and several children from the church helped bag the cookies earlier in the week.

About 275 bags of cookies were left over after Thursday's lunch shifts at the junior high school. Marlow plans to distribute the remaining bags at L.J. Schultz School today.

School principal Gerald Richards said the church always has been a good neighbor. "They have to be wonderful neighbors to have 700 junior high kids across the street from them," he said.

The school's Student Council is doing its own random act of kindness: Student leaders distributed geraniums to the church and neighboring homes Thursday.

"We want to be good neighbors with them," Richards said.

The cookies were a hit with the students.

"It's nice of them," said student Ryan McGill.

Student Lezlie Scifers thought the cookies were great. "They are good," she said.

"I like them," said student Kayla Sutter as she munched on a sugar cookie. She decided to eat her two cookies first, before going through the cafeteria food line.

Last year the church served a picnic lunch to students from the nearby Cape Girardeau Central High School as a random act of kindness.

Pensel said she enjoys the idea of promoting kindness. Said Pensel, "I love the week."