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KEEDEYSVILLE ? How did you spend your $50? This was the question asked at Salem UMC a year after the Rev. Malcolm Stranathan distributed 30 $50 bills to members of the congregation. The money came from an anonymous woman who gave $1,500 seed money with instructions that it was to help the community.

According to the Hagerstown Morning Herald, one woman used her $50 to help a woman she did not know buy a microwave; another parishioner bought a holiday dinner for a family of five and another used his money to encourage others and ended up raising $1,800 for Toys for Tots.

But the most amazing story, Stranathan said, was that of the Rev. Roger Burtner, retired, who started the Refugee Resettlement Fund for Southern Washington County. His seed money grew into the support needed to bring the Ajal family from a refugee camp in Ethiopia to begin life in the United States.