Pumped Up!

The last couple of weeks have been crazy with doing special neighborhood projects with hundreds of volunteers, having my son graduate from ASU and plan a surprise Mother’s Day get away for my Anne. This weekend was a rather incredible experience with having 80 youth from Denver and Portland partner with New City – Barrio to do 4 painting projects, clean up in the neighborhood, making food to take to the homeless and do a car wash. We had close to 150 volunteer between all of the New City Team and the Rio Vista Team.

I am always excited to see both adults and youth who are eager servants of Jesus. I have to admit that someone who isn’t use to warmer temps and has just come from the high country could easily flake out and take the easy route, stand around and just watch while others do the work. I was really impressed with the adult leaders who were the type that jump right in and give 150%.  What makes my life rock is that I have so many volunteers that show up without any hoopla and just do the work and make everything happen. So I am always ‘blown away’ by those like Phil, Matt, Bruce, Kim, George, John, Terrance, Shannon, Dave, Jenessa and many others.

As I am coming off a great weekend, especially with the graduation of my son from ASU, I come back down to earth and realize that doing the little things in life is so important. I try so hard to take Mondays off and get some time to chill and read. I don’t plan on who calls or what emergencies might happen. I am in the process of pursuing a couple of interns for the summer. We had played phone tag over the week because of the Urban Plunge and their schedules. So I end up talking for a couple of hours on the phone with these hopeful interns. I now have to shift from school year mode to summer schedule.

I’m humbled to think that God would use me to be a bridge between different communities through the vehicle of doing community service work. I know that it takes time, like years not months, for people that come out of totally different circumstances to relate back to each other. I’m excited to have a student at one of my partner Charter Schools ask to continue a dialogue about real life issues. (He is of a very different racial background.) He’s a very sharp student who lives in the ‘ghetto’, mom doesn’t live here and his dad is too successful to have time to hang out with him.

As I am writing this blog I get an e-mail from a fellow community driven partner who has helped assist with an internship grant for helping get a young couple to partner with us this summer! I had just e-mailed my friend a few days ago and am thrilled to see fruit so quickly. I still need to raise another $5K but the Lord of the Harvest is great at producing fruit.

I know that one of the ‘downsides’ of doing large community projects is the ‘cleanup’ afterwards. I have to now drive to 5 different sites to collect all of our painting equipment and put them back in our storage unit. Yeah, I’m thrilled to have 15 ladders, 100 rollers, 100 paintbrushes, stinky tarps and a zillion buckets. I’m fortunate to have a few special friends that will help me do this. The reality is that life is full of exciting times but also cleanup times when you have no choice but to deal with the mess. The great news is that God is pretty good at cleaning up the messes in life, especially my life.