Service, faith from the heart

NEWPORT BEACH — At a distance, it looked like a typical school project. Half a dozen young people sat around a table with magazines and scissors, cutting out pictures and pasting them into booklets. A series of baskets around the table provided categories for the pictures: “families,” “flowers,” “animals,” “scenery” and simply “fun things to see.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints creates the booklets every year to send to children in the poorest parts of the world.

Jaimie Day, a public affairs director for the local stake of Latter-Day Saints, called the booklets “dream books” — since the life depicted in American magazines was a dream to many in the Third World.

More than a dozen groups packed the church grounds Saturday as the Newport-Mesa Irvine Interfaith Council held its seventh annual “Hearts and Hands” community service day. The event invites people of all faiths — or no faith at all — to spend a day assisting local charities and providing for impoverished areas around the world.

The Interfaith Council opened Saturday morning with a tribute ceremony for veterans.

“There is no act of service that is greater than to stand between loved ones and those who would harm them — between tyranny and freedom, between goodness and evil,” Ken Everson, a colleague of Day’s, said.

Throughout the day, a number of nonprofits and youth groups set up tables around the church and encouraged volunteers to donate their time.

A Latter-Day Saints club held a bake sale to purchase bicycles for Cambodian orphans, while the Rotary Club provided materials for children and adults to write letters to soldiers in Iraq.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.