My Friend Laura

And Other Amazing Stories From C. C. Spaulding Local Mission Project

God has been so faithful this week in so many ways and I want to share a couple of stories and photos with you.  I mean, why should I experience all the joy...I need to pass it on.

The wonderful community of people at New Horizon Church have provided backpacks and supplies to an entire school for six years.  Every year we pray during the collection period that there will be enough for all 300 kids.  Each year God makes sure that we have enough.  With the economy being what it is this year, we prayed extra hard, knowing that 300 kids & their teachers needed us.

On Wednesday night 40 volunteers showed up promptly at 6pm and started packing the bags.  At 6:15pm, they were done! Many hands make work light! We had 300 backpacks packed with ALMOST all of the necessary supplies.  While we had an abundance of some items, we were lacking 76 packs of markers.  We had just counted the packs with missing markers and set them aside when Laura Griest walked into the lobby with a tote bag on her arm lamenting, "I'm late and now you're all done and I have all these markers."  Laura had 30 packs of markers in her bag along with as many colored pencils.  Ask her and she'll tell you that my reaction was not what she expected, as I began to do the "happy dance", leaving her thinking that we all had gone crazy.  Everyone else standing there was in awe too.  Laura was so excited when we told her about our missing markers that she promptly exchanged the colored pencils for more makers and picked up the remaining few we needed and provided just the perfect amount!

Laura showed up on Friday too, to help deliver the bags to C. C. Spaulding.  Chris Gilham, Malcolm Hester, Tiara Blount, D. D. Barnes, Kimberly McBride, Randall Poythress & Michael Johns gave up a couple hours of their Friday afternoon to deliver the bags.

We arrived at C. C. Spaulding and were greeted with hugs from Spaulding's principle, Ms. Kelly, along with hugs from many staff, who helped bring in the bags.  That's Ms. Kelly in the picture on the right.  After we brought 300 bags and 10 boxes of additional  supplies into the school, we asked Ms. Kelly if we could pray with her staff.  I was stunned by her enthusiasm as she gathered her staff together, along with our volunteers even suggesting we all hold hands.  It was an awesome moment.  Please join me in continuing to pray for the staff, students & their families, as they begin this new school year. 

Comments

[Melinda]

This is such a great thing I am proud or church does every year. God is awesome in providing through or church and NHC to these kids.

Malcolm felt really good about this thing. He ha a fire meeting Thursday night that he was a little late for and when he told his Captain where he'd been his Captain responded with "Well that's far more important that this meeting!" (Total seriosness.)

Malcolm's response about this whole thing "Nothing could bring me down after that!" He also said "I wish we cold get more people into doing stuff like this!"

And Taira - well she thinks this is the coolest thing ever. I think she had the most fun packing the back packs.