Lending a Hand

Katie invited Jessica and I to come down to her office to help wrap gifts for the kids in the 20 group homes they manage. What a great experience! It was impossible to wrap gifts and not pray for the little boy or girl or teen that would be opening the gift on Christmas morning.

I was able to talk to one of the women on staff there and gain more general information about the residents of the homes, their odds of going back home to their parents, and their needs. I'm planning a charity drive for the homes next month. I just need to finalize what needs I want to provide for. Look for an announcement the 2nd week of January.

In the meantime, here are some pictures from that morning. My thanks to the staff at Family Support Resources for allowing us to help.

At first I thought Jessica and I were the only wrappers,

thank goodness there were several teens there to help.

My daughters; always willing to help others.

I'm proud of them.

Since I normally watch Sunny on Tuesdays,

she came along to help.

319 Pairs of Flip-Flops Are on the Way to Haiti Orphanage!

Thanks to all of you our flip-flop drive was a resounding success! On May 25, 2010 I announced that my friends Beth and Nancy and I were holding a flip-flop drive to celebrate our 54th birthdays. The drive was to support the God's Littlest Angels Orphanage in Haiti. Our goal was 54 pairs of flip-flops each for a grand total of 164 pairs.

Your response blew our socks off! We collected 319 pairs of flip-flops in all sizes, colors, patterns and $50 in postage donations. This translates to eight boxes filled with flip-flops. Thank you does not seem enough to say to describe our gratefulness for your generosity.

Keep watching this blog for another giving opportunity in January 2011. And again, thank you for making our birthdays so memorable!

A Season of Service

Since I read "One Simple Act" by Debbie Macomber earlier this year, I've been focusing on how I can be generous in my life. I want generosity to be an everyday act in my life. This doesn't mean that I'm going to dole out one dollar bills to strangers on the street everyday, or pledge money to cure cancer, it means that I want to exhibit kindness and generosity each day through some (usually small) act.

Yesterday, I heard a man on KLOVE talking about the Season of Service event taking place in Phoenix in March 2011. I don't know the details, they're not what caught my attention. What intrigues me is the term season of service. That describes exactly what I want for the theme of this phase of my life. I want to share. To serve. I want to be generous all the time. I want it to become second nature for me to continually be thinking of how I can help others, friends and strangers alike, every single day.

I'm determined to pursue this within the realm of reality. Meaning I'm not going to set extraordinarily high standards for myself thus dooming myself to failures. I'm going to be real. Some days my act of generosity may be talking to a friend on the phone for 10 minutes. Other days it may be talking to her for one hour. Some days it may be sitting down to jot a quick note to a friend and place it in the mail. Other days it may be sending her a really long email. Some days it may be buying an extra can of food to start a stash for the holiday food drive. Other days it may be collecting flip-flops with my friends to send to Haiti. Hopefully every day it will include praying, not only for the prayer requests I receive, but for God to show me additional, out-of-the-box ways to express His generosity to me by being generous to others.

I'm quite serious about this. I feel convicted about this. God keeps putting this in front of my face this year. Kindness is one of the Fruits of the Spirit. I need to display kindness in my life, along with love, joy, peace, patience (really?!), goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Here I go... wish me success!