Week 12

top moments of the week:

1. natalie schooling everyone in bowling.
2. a lesson in being grateful and making our mothers presents!
3. driving together through the snow, singing christmas carols in the van :)



on the power of consistency..


routine is scary for me, i will be the first to admit that. in the past month or so, now that we have made several weekly commitments and our weeks look fairly similar, i have found myself several times broken out in a cold sweat, thinking and dreading being locked into a routine. for our friends, routine is special and necessary. they are thrown off if we don't do our usual wednesday activity, or if just one staff person is missing. they are "creatures of habit" to the extreme of the definition. now that we are three months into the program, even our participants have started to complain that we do the same thing every monday, or every friday...

you can imagine how this crippled me with fear. should we break all our commitments at the end of every semester and start afresh?

this wednesday at feed the children, staff member reggie told stephanie that there is no group of volunteers that works as hard as we do or gets as many boxes done as we do. they oftentimes have to stay longer because their volunteer groups goof off, but not us. they are so grateful for what we've done, and grateful that we keep coming back.
brittany, the volunteer coordinator at feed the children, told me that she is amazed at our improvement over the weeks. she set our goal at 120 boxes or 3 pallets this week, and we surpassed our goal by more than double- 280 boxes.

we are making an impact because we continue to come back, and we continue to work hard. of course i want everyone to have a great time at friends life, but more and more i am discovering that our goal is not to just have fun. serving is new and exciting in the beginning, and can give people a great high of knowing they are helping other people. that fades over time however, but that does not mean service should fade. we still need to work hard, we still need to show up. there will always be boxes to be made because there will always be people who are hungry, even when it stops being fun for us.

we also continue to have a great time at blood:water mission. we continue to get their mailings done and they continue to marvel at how fast we knock them out, but more than that it is becoming a time of fellowship for everyone. the entire staff of blood:water gathers when we are there, and does a fantastic job engaging our participants (and vice versa). it is a sweet time for our friends to see young people working hard to make a difference in this world.

happy snow day to all!

meaghan