Serving the community...

Happy Fall!!! I love October, I think it is one of my favorite months....I love all the colors and smells in the air...when we go on our morning walk the beautiful orange and red leaves reflect off of the water and its almost majestic..It reminds me of God's beauty in all things and makes me so thankful for all the things he provides for us.

On Saturday I went to Humboldt Park, which is in the city of Chicago...its a mostly puerto rican neighborhood and doesn't exactly have a good reputation..like most neighborhoods in the city, the crime rate is high and poverty is all around...The city is really trying to clean up the area and there is evidence of over priced boutiques and american eateries, but unfortunatley many of the people who live there make less than $25,000 a year and can't afford the "new" places being put in their neighborhood...The city is an expensive place to live in general and I was blown away by the prices...there was a little neighborhood grocery store and you could get eggs, bread and milk for $8.00!! Out in the suburbs I could get all that for about $4.50....Gas was $4.69 there, out here its $3.49....No wonder there is so much poverty....!! We were having the clothing sale at the community center which was a one room building..they handed out over 1000 fliers and it went out in their community newsletter so we thought there was going to be alot of people...But an hour after being there, we had only had a few people come through...there were 6 of us ladies so 3 of us decided to go and spread the word on the streets about it...Shellie, who is in my small group grew up in the area and her husband did also..her husband's father is a big part of the community so he was the one who was able to get us a place to have the clothing drive...he also had some cousins who were helping us and lived in the community so we went walking with them a few blocks down...we went to some laundry mats and then a huge park right in the middle of the community and handed out fliers...it really put me out of my comfort zone to talk to strangers esp in an environment that I am not used to...broken glass, grafitti and homeless people seemed to be a common sight on the streets...but there were also a lot of families too...The park had several homeless people and other shady characters wondering about but they also had a large really nice playground with prob about 50 kids playing on.it made me so thankful for what I have...when I take my kids to the playground, we are not surrounded with gangs or addicts out here in the suburbs...Our parks are pretty clean where this one was filled with garbage and smelled of urine from the homeless...So after a bit we started to head back to the center and several people we talked to at the park came over to get clothes...it was awesome!! We felt like we had really done something to serve God's kingdom...At the end when we were closing a family came in and we decided to take back out some of the boxes to let them get some stuff...we had a ton left over...they had a few kids and it was fun to help find the sizes and they were so excited over the most basic of items...plain sweatshirts and used socks and underwear...one of the boys played sports and we found hima bunch of athletic shorts and he was just so excited...and it just warmed my heart to know that we had just blessed this family...we loaded them up with several bags , hopefully enough to get them through the next year of seasons...I just felt so blessed to be part of it all!! We had a ton of stuff left over and it will be donated to several organizations and the some of the other stuff I think they are going to try and give away next weekend....It was a great way to spend my Saturday and I look forward to doing more things like that in the future...

Roxanne, Wendy and I serving the Kingdom!