Community Outreach Is Bearing Fruit

It has been both sweet and awe inspiring to watch how God connects guests at our center, those of us who work there, and other center sponsored activities in the community. Just in recent weeks, there are three families who have been impacted in multiple ways throught the ministries of the center. One such circumstance was when I made a home visit as a followup of the mom visiting our center for assistance. When she gave birth to her newborn, my husband and I visited her home to deliver to her a layette of newborn necessities and to pray with her for her family and the new addition. While there, her 6 year old son came into the room and exclaimed, "I know you!" As it turns out, he is in the classroom at one of the Title I schools where we are reading and tutoring. And the layette ministry is having such a meaningful impact. It is an opportunity to meet guests in their homes, to provide extra encouragement, and to pray with them. Connections are being made, relationships established, and guests are seeing us outside of the center, plugging into the community. There are other "divine appointments", instances where children of families served by the center are being taught character development through reading books by volunteers from the center. It is important to note that the consistency, the persistence of our presence in their lives, the role model that I pray we can be for these families, could have a lasting effect on the path that these children will take as they grow. I pray that it will be a positive step toward breaking the cycle of discouragement and poverty that prevails in many families which we serve. Last Saturday, several youth from Heritage Baptist Church joined us at the center to prepare for the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. They did much needed clean up around the building, they retrieved a lost shopping card, they wrapped gifts for children, and they packed over fifty Thanksgiving baskets, all of which have been distributed as of 3:00 this afternoon. We could have never accomplished all of this without their great help! The help that they gave was the culmination of their "Cardboard City" project in which they learned firsthand what the homeless and less fortunate experience on a daily basis. Thank you, Adam Bishop, for teaching the youth to give beyond themselves and to learn to be Jesus' hands to those in need.