Serve Week

One week this summer I was luck enough to serve with the teenagers from our church. Every morning we made sack lunches, one for myself, two to share. Every day we had a different project. Monday (July 5th) we picked up trash at a park in Kansas City. You can imagine what we found at Swope Park on the day after the 4th of July! The best thing I found was a couple walking down the street. They were collecting cans. We looked through my bag of trash and picked out all the cans. As we were digging, the lady told me that they can get $1 a pound for cans. She also asked if I had an extra pair of gloves. As we were walking to my car to get the gloves, I told her that we had packed extra lunches and water that day and asked if she was interested. She was. I gave her two lunches and two bottles of cold water and two pair of gloves. We said goodbye and God bless. Then I thought. $1 for a pound of cans? One Dollar? One pound? That's a lot of cans. And what does one dollar buy you? This was the first of many humbling experiences during the week. I thanked God in that moment for a house and a job and a family. We are so blessed.
After we picked up trash, we ate our lunches and talked about all the gross stuff we picked up. Then we headed out for downtown to hand out some lunches. It was really simple. We drove around and looked for people that we thought needed a lunch. We did this for 3 days. We gave out about 60 lunches. Some people took the paper bag and walked away. Some stopped to tell us their story. Many were very grateful. One man giggled, he was so happy! We drove in our cars silently, humbled by the situation.

Tuesday we worked in two groups. One group sanded and painted a lady's porch. The other group picked up trash in her neighborhood. Someone stopped as we were picking up trash and asked why we were there. We just answered that we were doing what we could for the people in the neighborhood. The lady whose porch was painted was very touched by our work. I was told that she said "thank-you" a million times and was moved to tears at the end of the day.

Wednesday we worked at a food pantry in Kansas City. We sorted bread and packaged cereal. We all got to wear sweet hairnets! In the afternoon we did some yard work for a special lady. Her husband had just passed away and she was preparing to host people at her house around the time of the funeral. It was raining and we were doing yard work. Mainly we were pulling weeds and bagging up grass. Heavy, dirty work.

Thursday we sorted clothes at a local clothes closet. Easy work compared to the previous afternoon! Later that morning we did some work at another food pantry.

In this entire week, I never heard one person complain about the work, the heat, the trash. We served with open hearts an I think everyone left having been changed.

Judah, Our Two-Year-Old

Judah turned 2 on July 1st. To celebrate, we put him in the car for 4 hours! I'll get to that. We tried to make a big deal about his birthday even though it was a crazy day. Since February I have wanted to get Judah a big stuffed Thomas that I saw at Target. A few days before his birthday we were in the store and found that they still had the coveted (by myself) Thomas. That was his special present from our family.
Since it had been months since we were in Iowa, we decided to go for a visit. We had to make a few stops before we left town. James had an interview for a job in Kansas City (more on that later) so we all drove to that. While he was interviewing I took the boys to Crown Center. We had a bagel at Panera and then went to the Clifford exhibit. The boys had fun, although I wasn't really impressed.
The drive to my mom's house was uneventful. We went to the city band concert on the square that evening. Most of the time the boys were clueless that there was a concert going on.
Saturday of that week my sisters came and we had a birthday party for Judah. He seemed to be afraid of the candles but loved his cupcake and ice cream!

Judah loves:
running around...yelling (He either says "ready, go" or "to infinity and beyond" before he runs.)
cars, trucks, trains
books
babies
animals

Judah is 34 inches tall and weighs 26 pounds.

Oh, by the way. It's a boy! Our third baby...is a boy!