Contact Me
Please share your service stories on this blog and help encourage others to find their community service passion or contribution. Email your stories to me at jane@getoutandgiveback.com. I may do some minor editing your story but will publish it if your story in the spirit of giving back.
Our Christian Embassy Men’s Discipleship Group
[Thursday Noon] at the Pentagon recently volunteered at “So Others Might Eat (SOME).” SOME is located at 71 O St NW in Washington, DC. SOME is very organized and the staff was a pleasure to work with. Although I only wiped down tables, ladled syrup onto french toast, and stacked chairs it was a very rewarding experience. They do more than just feed the needy, they also assist with medical issues, drug and alcohol treatment and job placement and interviewing skills. Go to http://www.some.org for more info.
Jesus has blessed me with a wonderful wife and a comfortable life. This service project made me much more appreciative for those things. It is such an honor to serve not only my Lord and Savior but also my fellow man. Get involved and make a difference.
We know God has a purpose to every appointment. I came across Jane’s Game Night article, and knew that I have been moving in God’s will.
My passion for board games comes from the amazing time people have when they gather around a table, laughing and sharing, while playing games. My passion has developed into http://www.meeplemania.com, offering great games, that are hard to find in most big retail stores.
From this, I am hoping to duplicate Jane’s successful ‘Game Night Ministry’ if I can call it that, by holding game nights at local non-profit centers that cater to children and families. I recently attended my first family fair, and everyone was very receptive and supportive.
In today’s world of internet and video games, we are slowly becoming an isolated society, and we see the pain in the news everyday. I am a firm believer that isolation is a serious ailement, and God created us, above all things to have a relationship with him, and so we are relational creatures.
If one game I donate or sell, touches a family by bringing them together, even for an hour I feel my purpose in that, and praise God for His favor.
“A Family That Plays Together…”
Thank you and God Bless your time together!
Submitted by Collen from generouskids.com:
Jane….
Thank you for your wonderful contribution through “Get out and give back”… I read the website and some of the articles this evening and thought about the contribution you are making…
We too have gotten into giving with our book “Generous Kids” – it’s a book for parents about teaching their kids the habit of giving just like we’ve taught them to brush their teeth…A simple, 1 /2 to 2 hour book that can help create generations of generous kids – a real living legacy.
You might enjoy looking at our website http://www.generouskids.com. We’d appreciate any feedback…
With gratitude – Colleen
good afternoon. I enjoyed your article in USA Today. is there a web site we can access with one of your public access shows on them? thanks lane
this is a tech test 1
Katrina
It was my second trip to the area in as many months.
My first was with a group of Furman University students who are members of an on campus United Methodist group called Wesley Fellowship. It was their spring break and the second trip to the area for many in the group. Their choice had been a Habitat house in the Bahamas, or to return to the Gulf. They chose the Gulf. We worked in the small gulfside community of Pass Christian or “The Pass” as the locals call it. The Pass was on the northeast edge of the storm., usually the worst area for a hurricane. From the damage I saw, this storm was no exception. 90% ( and that’s conservative ) of all physical structures were either obliterated or severely damaged. No commercial structure of any kind was available for use for several weeks after the storm. Our task was to sheetrock the ceiling of one home and complete the finishing touches on another. The latter would be the finishing touches before the resident’s moved out of their 8’x25’ Katrina trailer where a single mom and two children had lived for most of the last 15 months. For the folks that got to work on the this home, it was a special joy. Most on this team had been to the area the year before and seen the destruction at it’s worse. The team shared that being able to help someone begin to return their life to normal ( as normal as life can be in this situation) was a special gift. The home that I worked on became known as the sheetrock house. For a team of virtually unskilled labor to be taught the art of hanging sheet rock, and get all of the ceilings done in 3 days, would require nothing short of divine intervention. We got it. Our teacher was Mike Zimmerman, formerly a bartender in Detroit, MI when the storm hit. He would watch the news hour after hour and the burden on his heart finally overpowered him. He told a few patrons that he had to go do something, even though he had no practical skills. Within 1 week, he sold most everything he had, raised almost 3000.00 in donations, postponed a pending marriage and left for the coast almost 750 miles away. He knew no one. He arrived 9 weeks after the storm on the steps of the first local church he found and just said “I am here to help, use me”. Today Mike literally can do anything. His fiancé now wife is a social worker and the two live in a garage apartment. They plan on staying as long as there is work. They’ll be there a long time.
Mike taught 3 of us how to hang sheetrock. By the third day, the first group had spun off 3 other teams. Mission accomplished at the Sheetrock House.
I really hadn’t planned on returning to the area but our Youth Director at my home church of Advent UMC, Gene Aiken, approached me and said he was a team leader short, could I help. I asked what will I be doing and his answer made me gasp, “sheetrock”.
Nothing I saw in the Pass prepared me for what I would see in St. Bernard Parish, a community outside of New Orleans. It wasn’t the utter destruction we had seen in Pass, it was just empty. Row after row, street after street of vacant house and buildings, dirty, gray, ceilings collapsed, waste.
Our temporary home in The Pass had been Diamondhead UMC, sleeping in their clean, air-conditioned Fellowship hall and eating in their spotless kitchen. Not to be in St Bernard Parish. We slept in a converted tiny community Methodist Church that had been completely submerged for nearly three weeks. Inside were concrete floors, stud walls , lots of dehumidifiers and fans. Bugs, Bugs and more Bugs. Each evening neighbors would come over and tell us their story. This is a common trait I have experienced on nearly every trip I have been on, people want to share their story. I had told the team the evening before we started about this learning. Take time to listen, you may be the closest thing to someone who cares they have ever met.
My recently acquired proficiency in sheetrock hanging was seriously a gift from the Lord. I spent the first day training 3 teams. Fortunately we had one among us who knew how to tape and mud ( spackle ). By the 3rd day we had 7 teams expertly hanging sheetrock. We completed one house for a guy name Matt. Matt has severe diabetes and is paralyzed in his left hand and foot. Nonetheless, he has done most of the work on his home himself. Matt’s spirit and attitude significantly affected us all. When we asked him how he had handled losing so much, his answer shook me, he said” I have never attached myself to much of anything, and I know who I should trust for everything else”.
Amazingly, we found one of Matt’s Mom’s prayers from a small prayer book he said she read all of the time. She had died 1 year before the storm and had left him the house. The name of the prayer was simply ‘Advent Prayer’. ( the irony wasn’t lost on us).
Most Holy God, as we prepare to celebrate your coming among us, help us to open our hearts to your presence, this Advent may we discover you in those with whom we live and work, especially the struggling and the needy. May we find words of gratitude for what we have and words of encouragement for those who despair. May we desire the coming of your kingdom, not just as a final fix at the end of time, but as a renewal of our hearts this very day. Amen.
When we found this 3 x 5 piece of paper, laminated to a board by filth and debris ( Matt’s house had been submerged up to the gutters for 3 weeks ) we had to pause and marvel at the miracle of this one piece of paper surviving volumes of water and being found 19months later by us, a group from Advent, 600 miles away, who were there simply to help.
Our other home was a single mom who was out of money. She said that just before the storm she had recommitted her life to Christ, walked away from 27 years at Kmart to start working with children. She said the temptation to get a better job at times was over powering. She said that she had kept praying that God would send her laborers to help her. She said over and over what an answer to prayer we were.
I encourage you to intentionally seek out anyway you can to help those who have many years of struggle ahead of them in this devastated area. As a local pastor said at church service we attended “ God has given us the opportunity to do a new thing, with our neighbors and our city”. I agree. Go, serve, give, pray.
An organization that regularly leads working teams is:
http://www.missionarysupply.org
Outstanding blog, I can see you really have put a lot of work into making this a great read. Some great posts, shows you have put a lot of time and effort in to it for your readers. Keep up the good job.
I don’t understand why the header said it’s what you get, not what you give. Isn’t that backwards?
DEAR MS COLLINS,
I JUST READ UR STORY ABOUT ITALY IN THE CURRENT ISSUE OF THE REISTERSTOWN COMMUNITY TIMES, REISTERSTOWN, MD
I WAS IMPRESSED WITH THE STORY AND IT REMINDS ME OF MY EATING OUT EXPERIENCES.
I LIKE JOKES AND I TELL THEM TO THE WAITRESSES THAT WAIT IN US WHEN WE DINE. I FIND THAT TELLING JOKES, MAKES THE WAITRESSES FEEL BETTER AND WE BOTH KNOW THAT LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE. MANY OF THE WAITRESSES SAY”THANKS, YOU JUST MADE MY DAY. THAT IS MY WAY OF GIVING BACK TO A TOTAL STRANGER AND IT WORKS FOR ME .
I WILL LEAVE YOU WITH A JOKE.
WHAT DID ONE HOTDOG SAY TO THE OTHER HOTDOG?? HI, FRANK!!! ALL THE BEST, DON SHERMAN