Five women from the Acres of Love Park City Chapter "Mountains of Love" are scheduled to leave for Johannesburg, South Africa, this week to visit one of 22 homes supporting HIV positive foster children. Mountains of Love member Missy Kelly and Randi Jo Taurel, who offers "Yoga with Randi Jo" in Park City schools, partnered together to establish the community service project.

Students participating in Yoga with Randi Jo from Jeremy Ranch, Parley's Park and Trailside Elementary along with the Weilenmann School of Discovery and Another Way Montessori worked on scrapbook pages over the course of eight weeks. The pages were compiled into a book that Kelly plans on giving to the seven children living at the Bridges to Forever home sponsored by Mountains of Love.

"Each week the students work on a project and they have a page that they can tell these children what we're about. The students write or draw about who they admire, or something good they want to do in the world," Taurel said, adding that more than 40 yoga students participated. "It gives them a chance to become not only a part of the community but the world and we're representing the schools."

Students at Jeremy Ranch Elementary School are practicing "Seva," which is an act of selfless service with no expectations of getting anything in return, Taurel said, adding that they are also learning that yoga relieves stress. JRES fifth-grader Emily Sageser said this is her first year practicing yoga. She hopes the Mountains of Love kids will be able to feel the same benefits when they do yoga with Kelly.

"I've learned that if you sit down and meditate it calms you down and I feel that it (the book) will help them understand us and it will make them happy," Sageser said.

The Mountains of Love nonprofit was founded in 2009 by Parkite Melissa Fischer and now consists of 17 Park City women including Kelly. The group traveling to Johannesburg will meet the foster children ranging in age from four to 14. The group then plans to travel to Mossel Bay, South Africa, where the children can fish, do yoga on the beach and experience the ocean for the first time.

For more information about Mountains of Love or Yoga with Randi Jo, visit http://www.yogawithrandijo.com . To learn more about the national nonprofit Acres of Love, visit their website at http://www.acresoflove.org .

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Yoga students send service project overseas