Denver Sharefest
20 Jul 2012 Leave a Comment
in volunteer
Before we headed out we read our devotional for the day which didn’t seem to have anything to say about the day until later. (Do not hide from your fear…anxiety that you hide will give birth to fear of fear. Bring your anxieties out into the Light of My Presence, where we can deal with them together. Jesus Calling by Sarah Young)
We arrived at the home location of Brown elementary and got signed in. (My funky knee high socks and Grace’s, Bethany was wearing the piano ones.)
We got to see Noah and Hunter for a few minutes before the group prayed and then got together in smaller groups to head out to Denver schools to help out.
We were kind of bummed that we were all split up, but the first rule of serving is that you go where you are needed. The girls and I got in the car and drove to JFK high school to help there. Denver Sharefest is a project put on by Red Rocks Church and other agencies in Denver. It was their hope to save DPS 1 million dollars by using donations and volunteers to do projects at low income Denver schools that DPS would have to pay for. I’m sure you’re thinking why would homeschoolers (not everyone was a HS’er, I mean us) want to help out local schools? Well, we want to serve, we want to give and we recognize that not everyone can or wants to homeschool and there needs to be options for everyone. It is LOVE+ACTION.
I John 1: 5-7 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
One way that we can show the Light is to Love and Love requires Action.
So, we rolled up our sleeves and worked…hard.
We scrubbed tile and brick and lockers, we cleaned windows and trophy cases and to look at it you would have thought it looked just the same.
But, as many buckets of dirty water that we emptied, I can tell you that it was cleaner afterward. It might seem trivial: washing walls, stenciling parking lot numbers, cleaning playgrounds, building retaining walls, painting, planting trees, removing graffiti, but it is the hope of everyone involved that these small acts will impact the students and teachers. We worked hard in the heat, there might have been some A/C blowing but it was still hot inside the school building. We finished up the third floor and stopped for the day and waited on dinner. There was a mishap with the pizza that was supposed to be delivered, it got sent to the home location. Our team leader was so awesome, he drove (faster than we did) to get back to the home location to make sure there was pizza there…there was not. So, they ordered pizza just for us, which was very sweet. The kids played on the playground while we waited on the pizza and Grace was so hungry that she was on her 2nd piece of pizza before she came over to me and asked, ‘Can I cry now?’ Umm…..sure, I said, you can cry – can I ask why? I fell off the monkey bars and hit my head and I’m dizzy and it hurts. I checked and she had a goose-egg on the back of her head. {insert anxiety here} Yeah, next time alert me right away that you have a giant bump on your head. We iced it and she took some tylenol later on for a headache, but I think it’s fine. See, I told you the devotional came into focus later in the day. {And early the next morning too when we heard of the midnight shooting at a local movie theater, 12 dead, 50 wounded, the youngest was a 3 month old baby – that is certainly fear inducing. But, today Sharefest continues, a blood drive is planned and prayer is covering the area – we are casting out fear.}
We were blessed to be a part of this outpouring of volunteers for Denver and we hope to partner with Red Rocks Church in the future to help out again. Thanks to KLOVE for helping with getting the word out and for sending bands to get their hands dirty alongside the volunteers. And thanks to everyone who worked all week to clean up some Denver schools, we appreciate it.
