Last year members of All Souls Students in Service to Jesus Christ (ASSIST-JC) sold some 6,000 chocolate-covered Easter eggs to help pay for the youth mission group’s projects at All Souls Congregational Church in Bangor, reports adviser Joanne Reeves.

Now, with assistance from”dozens of church members,” ASSIST-JC is helping “make, package and distribute more than 5,000 eggs made of peanut-butter cream, coconut cream or cherry cream dipped in chocolate,” Reeves wrote.

Since its founding in 2000, she said, “not only has ASSIST-JC traveled to Honduras every two years,” but has completed local mission work as well.

“During the ‘homeland’ year,” she wrote, the group “painted and put new roofs on homes, painted a local church, cleared trails” in a state park and, in 2006, “constructed the Labor of Love Food Pantry in the Eastport area.”

Some 70 students and adults participate in mission trips that require “considerable, ongoing fundraising,” Reeves wrote.

Proceeds from the sale of this year’s eggs at $1 each “will help pay for building materials for folks in the Eastport area, as well as for the 2009 Honduras mission trip,” she said.

To buy the eggs or sell them at your business, call the All Souls Congregational Church office at 942-7354.

You may also buy the eggs at area businesses or outside Sam’s Club in Bangor on March 21.

Harbor House Community Service Center in Southwest Harbor needs volunteers to assist with the Great Harbor House Shootout, which takes place March 14-16 in Hancock County.

That 16th annual event, reports Margy Vose of Harbor House, features 67 high school and junior high school boys’ and girls’ basketball teams competing in round robin tournaments in five locations: the Bar Harbor YMCA, Mount Desert Island High School, Mount Desert Elementary, Trenton Elementary and Pemetic Elementary School in Southwest Harbor.

If you can help out with this event, call Harbor House sports director Scott Phelps at 244-3713, Ext. 104.

Here is food for thought for area women between 30 and 50.

From the University of Maine comes news that graduate student Danielle Meyer, who is working with professor Mary-Ellen Camire of the UM department of food sciences and human nutrition, is seeking women of that age bracket “for an appetite study involving potatoes.”

Those completing all sessions in the study will receive $100 in compensation.

According to the release, “some people believe that the potato, a Maine agricultural staple, makes one feel more full, after meals, and then eat less at later meals.

“This study will look at different types of potatoes served as part of a lunch provided by the researchers. This study may uncover the role of the potato as a potential tool for weight management.”

For information about becoming part of the study, call Meyer or Camire at 581-1733 or e-mail Danielle.McMann@umit.Maine.edu.

More information about the study is available at http://www.fsn.umaine.edu/news.htm.

This project is funded by the Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station.

The first Monday of January, I wrote about an upcoming benefit for 37-year-old Jenifer Poll of Hampden.

Earlier this week, Poll e-mailed to express her gratitude to you for that fundraiser.

“I was diagnosed in December 2007 with leukemia,” wrote the young mother of three and wife of Stephen Poll.

“Some very good friends and family” hosted that benefit “for our family,” she wrote in saying thank you to everyone.

“I can’t express how wonderful it makes us feel to know we live in a community that cares and is willing to give, like the community of Hampden.”

More than 500 people attended the event, she wrote.

“To know that many people care about you is very overwhelming.

“I had people come up and introduce themselves that don’t even live in the area, but read about the supper and wanted to help,” she said.

“Some were even leukemia survivors and just wanted me to know that there is life after cancer. I am very grateful to everyone. We feel very fortunate to be raising our children in this community.”

And while the Polls know just saying “thank you will never be enough,” she wrote, “it is all we have at this time. Someday, we’ll be able to pay our good fortune forward.

“But, for now,” she said, the Poll family thanks “everyone who has helped us out during this rough time in our lives.”

Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; javerill@bangordailynews.net; 990-8288.