Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Serving at St. Joe's

It was cold out last night. Perfect night to bundle up, stay in and feast on chicken tortilla soup after being gone all day. Where did we go instead? The homeless shelter. It was not how you might picture. St. Joe's Emergency Family Shelter is a cozy house off MLK with room for five families to stay for a month. They have access to three meals a day with volunteers coming in to serve warm dinners. We volunteered with another family (thanks Andrew for setting it up) and were amazed with how inviting, clean, friendly and home-ish it all felt. In fact, Megan and Lucy wanted to spend the night and invite the other kids from there to their birthday parties (which was not supposed to be the point of the trip) ;-)

This trip was brought on by several reasons:
-We decided the girls could keep their birthday gifts this year. ;-)

-Since we have been reading the Bible together, I have also been keeping a prayer journal with the girls. We have really been trying hard to list blessings also instead of always focusing on what we want for others and ourselves. Lucy and Megan always mention how they are thankful for our warm home and food. That spurred the "some people don't have that discussion."

-Ahh...the glamorization of Kit, The American Girl continues. They have read the books, seen the movie and were really interested in the homeless shelter scene.

Of course, this experience was very different then would be during the Great Depression. They did have questions about where the families went after a month of being there and where they went to school. Mostly though, Megan and Lucy were just kids; enjoying the lasagna, apple juice and cookies with the other families, playing with a number of toys, and hopping around the living room in front of the tv. ;-)

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