Through our first official holiday outreach, we were able to bless three families with Thanksgiving dinner this year.
We also surprised some of the Urban Life family with gift cards from the Giant Food Stores. Just being able to do this brings us great joy.
A special thanks goes to Bobbi Lehman and Jennifer Munoz for pulling it all together. Bobbi simply felt impressed by the Lord that we should do something special as a church family. Jennifer contacted one of the local school districts and connected us with their efforts to assist children and their families with food.
I felt like a proud father as Bobbi stood before the church family and broke into tears as she thanked everyone for contributing. Jennifer told all of us that she learned that many children only eat during the federal funded free breakfast and lunch meals. However, they don't eat when they go home every day. It was stunning to learn that many children who eat lunch on Friday afternoons, don't eat again until breakfast on Monday morning.
Well, we have found our practical ministry to affect change in this community. So we have officially luanched our new Family2Family Community Outreach.
We're going to help as many families as we can during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. However, well beyond the holiday season, we are going to establish this as a regular outreach for the children in the school districts that will allow us to help in this way.
What I love so much about all of this is that this was not a Pastor-initiated outreach. Our own church family heard from God and they did all of the work to do this.
We have fought through a lot and waited a long time for this day, and it was all worth it. Our little congregation has taken ownership of the ministry and taken personal responsibility to answer the call to touch our community.
Yeah, I feel like a proud father.
