We did not have church service yesterday so there are not any message notes to post. Instead of holding service, we had our annual CCC Day of Service ("Don't go to church, be the church!"), where we all went out and served in various capacities in the community.
There was a group who packaged meals for Stop Hunger Now, an organization that assembles and sends prepackaged meals to countries around the world. I believe the goal was something like 15,000 or more meals completed. I haven't heard the results yet, but I'm sure the mission was accomplished.
One group helped with yard work around Durham Middle School, our Sunday morning location. It is always nice to be able to give to the place that allows us to do what we do.
Another group, which included most of our teens, went to City of Refuge where they helped feed the homeless and participated in their Sunday morning worship service.
A group went to the State Fair to help collect canned food on behalf of Must Ministries, an organization that works with the homeless in our area providing food, clothing, and emergency shelter. We have also had a box in our church lobby the past few weeks to collect Bibles for Must to distribute to those who need them.
One group worked with Care Net, an agency near Georgia State's campus in downtown Atlanta that offers a variety of services to pregnant women including counseling, parenting classes, services information, as well as a clothing and supplies pantry. I believe they helped install shelving, provide office furniture, and sort through the various clothing donations.
The group that I participated with volunteered at the YWCA in Marietta. We did yard work/landscaping on a courtyard, removed kudzu from a tree (no small feat if you are familiar with kudzu), and picked up litter around the facility. I learned that the organization can receive funds from recycling old cell phones and cell phone chargers. In a few weeks, we are going to set up a box in our lobby for CCC members to donate their old phones.
In the afternoon, some people also went down to the Austell area to help Samaritan's Purse and Westridge Church clean out some of the flood damaged houses in the area. I appreciate those who were willing to work both morning and afternoon to serve those in our area.
I really enjoyed serving yesterday. It always encourages me to find more ways to serve, but I am not usually very good at following through. I did however decide to take the initiative on collecting cell phones for the YWCA and Neal and I talked some today about continuing to improve the courtyard, be it by obtaining some better playground equipment along with more kid-friendly ground cover for the playground, locating gently used patio furniture, or even planting flowers in the spring to provide more color. I really would like to do more to help the agency. They have a 5K at the end of the month, but it's the Sunday morning of our 5th anniversary celebration. Perhaps their next event.
I am excited to learn next week how much money was raised in the Mina Offering Challenge. I am praying that it will blow our minds and fully cover all of our Day of Service expenses. I still have one more Farmer's Market tomorrow to sell bread for the project. I am interested to learn what others have done to make their money grow!
Baby Girl and Wrightsville Beach
15 years ago
