teaching service

Since my kids love raking (and playing in) the leaves, it only made sense to rake our neighbor's leaves for the Worldwide Day of Service the church hosted.  We have befriended an older couple that lives 2 doors down (Linda and Butch), and Butch has had a lot of health issues lately.  He is recovering from cancer, but he also had a hip replacement in October. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to teach Brooke and Colby about the importance of service.

So, despite my hurt back (see previous post's sidenote), we decided to rake the leaves when we got home from visiting Santa.  We walked down to their home and rang the doorbell.  I wanted to first check in with them and make sure it was okay for us to rake the leaves.  They didn't answer, so I made the executive decision that it was fine.  As we were about to get started, their teenage grandson (who also lives down the street) walked past.  He informed us that his grandpa was in the hospital for a potential stroke, so I was really glad that we were doing this service for them.  

Everything started out well, but Colby quickly pooped out. In his defense, it took a lot longer than I thought it would because there were so many leaves!

About an hour in, I could see the end in sight, but my back was killing me and the kids were starting to fight about who was messing up whose pile.  My patience was wearing thin, and I was getting frustrated with my kids.  Then I was frustrated with myself that I was feeling such negative thoughts when we were supposed to be having an amazing experience serving our neighbor.  I tried to snap out of it and told my kids that we could hurry and finish, then head home for the Sparkling Martinelli juice they've been begging me for. It worked to give them a little boost, and they seemed pretty pleased with their efforts as we stacked all the bags together for a picture.

In total, I think we spent almost an hour and a half at their house, then dragged everything back to our house. When Brooke saw our other neighbor's house, she wanted to go rake their leaves as well.  I was not feeling it, but how could I deny her an opportunity to serve when she was so excited about it?

Well, turns out I really should have told her that we'd do it a different day, because it was a bit of a disaster.  These neighbors are capable of raking their own leaves, and have probably the biggest trees in our neighborhood.  Big trees equal a million leaves, and their leaves were covering their entire driveway as well.  We started getting all the leaves off the driveway and onto the lawn just to make the bagging easier, then moved onto the side yard.  By this point, the kids just wanted to go home, but how could we leave when we hadn't really made much visible progress?  (This is why we shouldn't have started in the first place!). I made the kids stay and help me at least bag up all the leaves on the side yard, and then I texted the neighbors that we would finish another day that week.  They responded with gratitude that we did any of the work, and let me know that they hired a guy to come get all the leaves the next week.  At least we were off the hook for that house, haha!

I went home very frustrated, but as soon as I rested in the house I was able to see the great lesson my kids learned and was grateful for the experience.  Next time, I just need to set limits so that I can be more reasonable in my expectations for the kids.

A few days later, Linda came down to thank us for raking the leaves and asked if I knew that Butch had been in the hospital.  I told her that we knew once her grandson told us, but that we had planned to rake their leaves for the day of service.  She commented that God really knew that they needed the help, and that they were so grateful for our family.  It was all worth it, haha :)

I need to be better at serving with my kids and teaching them how important it is to minister to others! That's definitely something I want to work on in the New Year.