Avoiding Evil

Today was all about community service. Our students went to two different nursing homes, to the Agape House, to Meramec Mission, to rake some yards of the elderly, and to do some odd jobs for some people in our church who can’t do them. They painted, sorted clothes, bought groceries, and did several other things for the community. The group I went to help was at Meramec Community Mission. They sent us to the store to buy food for the pantry this week. Each week they spend over $1000 in food and they give that much away on a weekly basis. It’s amazing to see how many people are helped by the mission, even in our town.

So far we have raised $5,600 for World Vision and the students still have two weeks to continue getting donations. I hope to collect even more money than we did last year. This year there are enough grants to provide World Vision with $7 per $1 we raise. That means the $5,600 that we have raised already will equal $39,000 for World Vision. That will feed 108 children, 50 more than we were able to feed last year.

Our youth made 1,208 crosses out of popsicle sticks using two hot glue guns. We then took the crosses and placed them in the front yard of the church. We made a sign that says “1,208 children die every hour from hunger.” This was a good way to help them get a visual of how many children die every day. We also attempted to make 29,000 handprints. I then cut that down to 5,800 handprints with each hand equaling 5 children. We only made it to 1,600 prints. I am planning on hanging the ones we have done up in the hall way of our youth room along with several pictures from the digital camera rally. It will serve as a good reminder of what we accomplished this weekend.