God's vessel

This year for my daughter's service project at school...... her class adpoted a family. Not just any family but a family that is at risk. A family that has a teen on probation for one reason or another or the teen has been in a gang.

The children would all donated $10.00 and I would go shopping for the family. We wanted to give a food basket, a fruit basket, a family game, a small gift for each family member and my daughter's classmates would decorate cookies for them. Sounds easy enough. We had no idea the number of members in the family until we received the email. Thirteen. That's right... thirteen. Okay, I did the math... we had $160.00 to spend. How would we be able to do all of the things that we had wanted to do?? I will tell you, in the beginning, I had doubt.

I went to school and shared the news with my daughter's teacher, Mrs. Lofton...... she suggested that we buy the food basket, the fruit basket and a family game. The kids would still be able to decorate the cookies, but that's what we would be able to do. I left for a few minutes and then went back to discuss more on the project. Mrs. Lofton looked at me and said wouldn't it be great if we could give this family gifts with two tags.... one telling the age and sex of the child(that's all we knew) and the other blank so the parents could make the gifts from them rather than us. New plan..... still the same amount of money.

We all started praying for this service project. I was sharing with others what our service project was this year. More praying.............. more sharing. God used many people in my life to make this project a success. My friend, Christina, is a bigger pack rat than me and she brought over lots of great gifts for the girls in the family. One day I called another friend, Faith, about something else. I mentioned what we were doing and she said they had pulled their advent tag for the day and it said to give a gift to someone that is in need.... she asked if she could give us some new board games?? Do you see God's hand in this??? My friend, Amanda, gave back a scrapbook that I had given to her for a door prize. My friend, Jenn, gave me several cool gifts that she bought on clearance..... one was a scrapbook kit. Here's a cool thing......the family had two teen daughters who both will have a scrapbook!!!! Someone gave us additional money for gifts.

Here's what we were able to give to the family...... 4 or 5 boxes of food, a box of bread products, a fruit basket, a health and beauty box, a junk food box(this was my favorite), toilet paper, laundry detergent, cleaning supplies, a huge stocking filled with goodies, a Bible, a gift card donated from Walmart for meat, 3 gifts for each parent and 4 gifts per child.

God is AMAZING !!! You see, this is more than any of us could have imagined, but when we go with God's plan and not our own..... it's so much better.

We started the day before we were suppose to wrap everything and I am so glad that we did. Mrs. Lofton made the toothpaste and deoderant look like a million bucks. She was kind enough to make all of our baskets and the beautiful bows on the gifts. The director of the CARS program came to LCS while the children wrapped. She was amazed at what she saw. She told the kids a little about the program and how much they were helping this family.

I stopped by Marie Detty (the CARS program)today to drop off a few goodies. I was told that the case worker spent several hours with the family when he dropped off the gifts. The mother cried and the kids were overwhelmed.

This is not about me or the children at LCS... this is about being the vessel that God has called us to be. This is not to brag about what we did.... it is to let you know that God will use you if you listen. We were able to bless a family and share the Love of Christ. That's what we are called to do.

Here's some of the finished boxes

a food box

The junk food box.... we gave lots of heathly
food, too.

The cookies that the kids decorated.

Logan's class..... with everything that we gave the family.