Being There

Teaming up with the Muscatine School District Summer Lunch Program, the Calvary Hands and Feet group provided programming to Cedar Park Apartment children for a week after the lunch meal. It was a fantastic week!

Special thanks to leadership for their support, prayers of the Gatekeepers, women who beautifully assembled and decorated pails full of summer items to be given away for drawings, a woman who made beautiful cards to personalize the pails, a women’s small group for their financial donation to purchase the items in the pails and for faithful women who assisted with the teaching and activities.

There were varying numbers of children (and parents/grandparents) each day, but we had the opportunity to minister to around 50 children throughout the week!

Here are some highlights that I can share:

• Tablets decorated and given to friends, certificates of honesty made, tinfoil art, finger-painted respect posters, cards thanking police and firefighters for courage, cards made for military personnel working for peace
• Children and families coming back day after day
• Popsicle face smiles
• Children sitting quietly listening to books about friendship, honesty, respect, courage and peace
• Being there for children and adults to talk and share their stories
• Laughter and smiles during friendship tag, respect ball tag, courageous ball rolling, peace tag
• Children crying because “they did not want to leave”
• Children eating, playing games, learning, creating, sharing, caring
• Parents/grandparents watching, helping, participating, respecting, appreciating
• Smiles, hugs and the huge joy the children showed when they were the winner of one of the two pails given out at the end of each day
• Older youth taking on leadership responsibilities
• Having great talks with parents while cleaning up together under the picnic tables
• Distrust to trust
• Being able to talk to the children about women who put the pails together because they cared about them
• While driving in to the apartments, adults and children waving and then coming over to the site
• Children’s comments on the last day, sadly “You won’t be back?,” “You should come back next summer,” “You should do an afterschool program”….
• Hopefully showing encouragement while receiving it ourselves

“Give, and you will receive. You will be given much. Pressed down, shaken together, and running over, it will spill into your lap. The way you give to others is the way God will give to you.” Luke 6:38

How grateful I am to be serving a loving and merciful God who presents us with opportunities to give to Him daily. So many times it is a matter of being where God wants you to be at that point in time to make what impact He wants you to make. What an encouragement to see Christians being there!

- Submitted by Audra Diederichs