Family Outreach

Our family is growing in our quest to serve others in outreach programs. And in the drive of outreach, I have found, that it is easy to get tunnel vision. You have a passion, you want to follow your passion, so you do. You see all things through this one view. And that's okay.

But it is also okay to stretch in other ways. You can bend the direction of your passion, and still have passion. You can turn your attention to another service, and still feel your heart and soul fulfilled. We believe that just because you have a passion for one thing, does not mean that you can't have passion for many things.

Shifting focus, tweaking an idea, including more, jumping to another bridge, changing your road map, finding an entirely new area of life ... is all okay. Our family just wants to stay the course on outreach - no matter how big, small, no matter the subject matter of helping people, the environment, animals, or the universe. We want to stay focused as a family on serving.

So what started out as a quest to find "Our Next Thang" ... we happened upon this great organization. I was really looking at Habitat for Humanity (HH); the amazing group who creates a team of rotating volunteers to build  houses for those in need. My kiddos are hooked on old episodes of Extreme Makeup: Home Edition and were longing to "get involved" in building for others.

We are a family that takes a vacation idea and builds an incredible journey around that one idea. So this fit perfectly. We had chattered about arranging a vacation to a hot destination state - say New Mexico, or Arizona - and instead of just "vacationing", we would volunteer with HH. Work during the day (painting for the kids, maybe something more labor intensive for us-parents), swim in the pool at night, and then add on extra days of just exploring the town/state we were in.  We were jazzed!! This would be an incredible vacation!!

Until I found the rules and requirements page. No persons under the age of sixteen allowed on the work site. Our dream ended with HH.  But not to be discouraged - I immediately did a Google search to keep going with an outreach quest that we could do. And I found a way to help.

On June 25th. our family will be holding a donation drive at the entrance to our neighborhood to collect gently used, or new, clothing, books, shoes, and toys for our local area Foster Kids. The items we receive will be donated to the *house Wearhouse, which is a store that is free to all area Foster Youth to shop. The *house also has other ways they provide a service of help and success to Foster Children through their Tutoring program, College and Career Planning, Educational Advocacy, Little Wishes Campaigns, and Summer Camps.

My kiddos certainly have plenty to donate, and we felt that perhaps our friends, family, and people passing by, will feel the same about the items in their closets, dressers, and drawers and would be willing to help too.

So our broadcast email and social media flyer went out yesterday about our hosting of this donation drive. We are looking forward to packing our cars stuffed to the rim (perhaps making multiple trips!) for the drive to the Wearhouse. We will enjoy a tour of the facility (so it just doesn't stop at the loading dock) to gain more insight about this organization and what our donations mean to them. And we will be gifting monetary donations that will be given too.

Family Outreach - staying involved in serving others does not always have to be the same idea. Changing it up and adding to your focus is equally important to growth.

If you are an out-of-town reader and would like to give a monetary donation, please send me a Comment with your email address. I will not publish the Comment, but I will contact you. Thank You!