Homeless Outreach 1/16/10

Call me an Outreach Junkie... I don't care. I will gladly take pride in this obsession. I love it!

A few weeks ago my sister expressed a huge burden on her to reach out to the homeless in Lancaster. Actually, she had been expressing it for a while, but she decided to take the next step in expressing it publicly and asking people to move with her to do something about it. So today, we finally took our first step to do something about it.

Outreach is always amazing to me. I love the comradery it brings with all those who go together. But today was a different kind of amazing. I have never served along side my family. Interesting thought. Of all the service opportunities I have taken part in and of all the years I have known them... 26 years knowing my mom, 20 years knowing my sister, and 13 (or so?) years of knowing Ron... we have never (as far as I can remember) done service together. Crazy! So today was different. We didn't come together because we had a common goal. We were already together and decided on a common goal... together.

We had a group of about ...counts on fingers... nine of us who went out today! We had 100 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, 5 cases of water, a few bags of socks, some chips, and 40 hygiene 'goodie' bags... all of which... we RAN OUT OF! Amazing!

We met quite a few people, some of which we got to pray and cry with, and a few who even want to come to church! We had no idea what today was going to look like, where we would go, what we would say, or who we would meet. We just knew we had to do it and we prayed the Holy Spirit would lead us in the right direction. And He did!

Thank you Jesus for your leading. Thank you for breaking our hearts for what breaks Yours. Thank you for Frank, Lester, Joshua, Ivan, Jennifer, Anthony and Ed, and everyone else we met. We pray that You would continue to work on their hearts and in their lives.

Thank you for being you, God. What more could we ask for?