Thanksgiving Dinner 2015

I've seen the opposite ends of the spectrum today.

This morning my wife organized a Thanksgiving Dinner for some homeless and less fortunate people.  We had over 50 people show up to help load the food into containers and deliver it.  We had more than that drop by to bring in the food.  It was pretty nuts.  I didn't even recognize some of the people that helped us out.  One guy that showed up was from another state and happened to be in town, heard what we were doing (don't know how), and then wanted to help us.  It went really well.  People started bringing food in around 9:30am.  We had 150 complete meals with desserts ready by about 10:30 or so and then it was all delivered and cleaned up by 11:30.  Wow.

Just a week ago Mindy was considering canceling because we didn't think we even had enough food for 50 people.  When we were all said and done this morning we had run out of containers (150) and had just a little bit of food left over (John 6 - crazy).  It was great.

When our family, plus a couple teenage girls, left to deliver our meals we drove past several homeless people sitting outside eating meals that people from our church, and group, had already delivered.  That was pretty neat.

Probably my favorite part was a short conversation I had with a mom.  I hadn't met her before and, honestly, I have no idea how she heard about our little "feeding the homeless party."  She thanked me for letting her come and help and have her daughter involved in helping people.  She told me that she didn't grow up doing this and she wanted her daughter to grow up believing that helping the less fortunate is just something you ought to do.  I told her that I try to make this kind of stuff "normal" for my kids.

I want my kids to grow up thinking that serving people is normal.

So I didn't invite them to run to Target with me just after 6pm in order to see if we could get a Wii U for $249.00.  It was crazy.  There were people everywhere.  They were clamoring for all the deals.  (I'm not judging - I was there too!)  Luckily, they were all out and I didn't have to stand in line for a couple hours to save the $50.

I'm proud of my wife for leading this dinner and I'm proud of my kids for helping out and not complaining about it.

I think this is how we change the world.  It's not about complaining it's about training.  It's not about reacting to the ugliness in our world it's about proactively teaching the next generation.  It would be great if our kids grew up serving others rather than having nice toys.

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