Starting Again

I can't believe that it's a year since we started Change Becomes Change as part of our family Lenten project to do nice deeds for others. We've all learned a lot over the past year and have grown closer as a family in our service journey.

I know we're doing good work in our community and I see little signs that our efforts are also making an impression on the children. We had a special family Valentine's dinner and we each shared what we love about our family. My son said: that we help others.

That kid knows just how to get me all choked up

That same evening we started talking about what we wanted to do for Lent this year. Do we want to make a sacrifice and give something up? Do we want to serve others? It was a unanimous decision to find ways to touch another life each of the next 40 days in a special way.

We generated some new ideas and the kids offered up some of their favorites like feeding the hungry, calling grandparents more often, filling other people's buckets and picking up trash. I was pleased to see that they could reflect back on the past year and recall some of the good deeds they'd accomplished and how good it felt to help.

For today, they bought food for the hungry after school and made special notes for their grandparents who are coming to visit. We'll be sharing some of the new ideas that we're excited about very soon...so stay tuned.

We'd also love to hear of some new ideas you have to get your children involved in helping others. What have you done with your family? 

Here are some of our favorite ways that we've helped others this past year:

Doing Good with One Click

The Little Things That Count

Feeding the Homeless

Building a Hunger Garden

Comments

[kelly']

Gina, I really look forward to reading about the things that you guys do this Lenten season! Thanks for sharing them with us and giving us good ideas.
Kelly

[Jodi]

Congrats on the milestone, I look forward to hearing and seeing more of what you and your wonderful family have to share!

[Angie Blackwell]

Gina,
In better times, my kids, siblings, parents and I adopted a woman's shelter at Christmas time. We figured that a lot of people buy gifts for little kids, so we purchased gifts for the teens and mom's living in shelter. Because there are so many of us, we were able to bring in hundreds of dollars worth of useful and fun gifts. As a survivor myself, I also sent a hand-written note to each of the women with some inspirational thoughts along with a gift card they could spend on themselves however they wished.

While in the 3rd grade, one of my daughter's was asked during sharing-time if she wanted to share anything she did or received over winter break. I was so proud that instead of telling the other kids of the gifts she received, she told of the gifts we gave to kids and moms that had to leave their homes and had nothing of their own.

I'm sorry to say that we haven't been able to do this for the past two years, but Christmas hasn't been the same. Next year, I'll do the same, but on a smaller scale. I can't tell you how good this made my kids feel and how much they enjoyed spending their own money on other people.