Be the Church

Yesterday was our church's fourth annual "Be the Church" Day.  "Be the Church" is serving in our community and doing practically the things Jesus taught.  We did tons of different things this year!  There were even more opportunities to serve than last year.  A group of people did automotive repairs for our older members.  Several people packed boxes for our military and missionaries.  We served a meal at our Impact Inner City Church.  A group went to the local park and handed out bottles of water.  There were lots of people who took homemade cookies and passed them out at a nursing home.  Last year we had a great time weeding and trimming a bush at one of our homebound member's homes. 

This year we cleaned up our neighbor's yard.  They are an older couple and the wife was recently diagnosed with lung cancer.  They are consumed with doctor's appointments and chemotherapy and testing and there is no time for the spring yard clean up that is so necessary here in Houston.  This year was MUCH harder work than last year.  We were the crew leaders on this project and so we spent a lot of time beforehand preparing for everything that needed to be done.  Randy started out on the roof raking leaves off.  He was up there almost an hour!  You can see the pile he accumulated on the ground.

I spent the day running around getting supplies (we had to make a mulch run), keeping the kids on task, and keeping track of Justin.  Justin did not sleep well on Saturday night and so he was wandering aimless and needing lots of love.  Fortunately he was able to play in our backyard and Randy could keep an eye on him from the roof.  When I ran inside to print a coupon for the mulch, I found him playing with the water hose.  He had managed to get the last few drops of water out and he was trying to drink by putting his face into the tiny puddle the drips formed.  I promise I had given him a drink!  After not too long I fed him some lunch and he laid down for a little nap.  Love those baby monitors! 

We had several other people from our church help us and we started on the flower beds.  I got a blister after about a half hour of raking the deep piles of leaves from around all the bushes.  Travis had his hard hat on so he wouldn't get hit by any falling debris.  I am not sure if that was necessary, but he wore it the whole morning.   He made friends with one of the teenage girls who was there with her mom.  Her name is Alexis, but Travis called her Alaska!  One of our great finds was some flagstones that form a path to the bench you can see in the picture.  We found about 8-10 stones and everyone got excited when they found one!  I had forgotten they were there!

I was so busy that I didn't get near as many pictures as last year.  (That and my camera battery was almost dead.)  We worked for four solid hours and we didn't get a chance to trim their bushes.  We will try to get to that later this week. 

The whole block ended up getting in on the party.  Our neighbors from across the street came home and offered to help along with their children.  And our neighbors on the other side of the house we were cleaning up came out with their sons too.  The little ones helped hold the trash bags open for us to put the leaves into.  Justin enjoyed having the help!  He was covered in dirt by the time we were done.  I threw him in bed without a bath, but that was the first thing we did when he woke up!

I had no idea how many leaves were in their yard until the bags began to accumulate.  This is what we collected in our driveway...

And this was in the neighbor's driveway!!

I counted at least 50 bags plus three trash cans full.  It was amazing what we collected.  Plus we put out 30 bags of mulch.  And another neighbor planted some flowers in pots for them.  We only had 6 people from our church who could come, but God sent our other neighbors to help with the rest.  Fifteen of our neighbors came out to help our little group finish the enormous task!  Our neighbors in the house we served were very grateful and we were so happy to be able to help them in the small little area we could.   And we had a great time visiting with our neighbors and working together for something way beyond ourselves.