Service with a smile

(Can't believe the last time I wrote something was at the end of the last school year and now, we're about to finish the first quarter of a whole new year!)

This past weekend, our church participated in Faith in Action Sunday, where we joined thousands of other churches across the country in replacing our worship time with a service project. In our case, more than 65% of our congregation headed to KCK to help Hillcrest Transitional Housing to clean and refurbish an old dormitory into apartments for homeless families and individuals. One of the clients who is about to graduate from the program (which has a 95% success rate after one year) thanked us. She told us how her life was going to be different and how she now had hope because of groups just like ours that gave our time and talents.

One of the aspects I enjoyed most about this project was that our whole family had the opportunity to serve together. While hubby tackled the manly outside projects in the cold, Olivia and I focused on scrubbing the kitchen in one of the apartments. On the way there, she asked if it was going to be fun. As we were driving home hours later, she said "that really was fun."

Of course, I wanted to pontificate on the character-building value of service, and how God calls us to be servants, and it wasn't supposed to be about fun. But as I watched those little six-year-old arms scrub for several hours with not a complaint in sight, I realized that she got it. She's never worked that hard on our kitchen - she even had her fellow scrubber going back over places they'd missed - she seemed to understand her sponge was working for a higher purpose.

I was so proud of her hard work. Obviously, she was too, as during the middle of her work, she turned to me and said "If I work really hard, can I get a milkshake?" Well, she earned one. We all did. (Sorry - no photos. Maybe a video after this weekend.)