A Serving Summer

I normally like to home school year round. At least we usually do a few days of schooling per week, but much to my children's delight, we're postponing our start until July. One obvious reason is that we needed a month off. The not so obvious reason is that in an effort to continue becoming more Heaven Minded, (and beat away the "I'm bored!" I hear far too often!) we have intentionally contacted friends to come to our place to swim (at our complex's pool). We're also attempting to be intentional about having the kids' friends to our home for sleepovers and scheduling families to come have dinner with us and hang out by the pool. We want to be very proactive about living in community with our friend this summer.

But one of the things I'm most excited about was my friend Kari's idea of a summer challenge. Instead of participating in our local library's reading program, we've developed our own challenge...tailored to each child's gifting and abilities. The challenge is broken down into three different categories: spiritual, mental and physical. Instead of winning a book at the library that they'll never read, if they complete the challenge, they'll each receive a monetary prize that they can spend on anything they want. Sounds great doesn't it?

My favorite category is spiritual...and I'm not just saying that to sound self-righteous. On their own initiative, they are reading their devotions and as a family we're serving together throughout the summer. In our first week alone, we chalked up 5 1/2 hours. Truly...we're not serving just to mark something off our list. If you've read this blog very long, hopefully you've picked up on the idea that serving together as a family is extremely important to me.

We'll continue our monthly rotation at the Henry Hosea House in Newport and now that I'm not working, we'll be able to rejoin our friends at our monthly nursing home volunteer day. But two new places where we're volunteering are Master Provisions (this one is Abbey's passion) and with our church at a government subsidized neighborhood just down the road from where the church building is located. These last two have my heart pumping because both are an extension of our calling and passion to serve single moms. Both serve the desperately poor and as expected, mostly single moms.

Also, as God leads and provides opportunities through Boundless Ministries, we will continue to pray for and serve the single moms we know and the ones we have yet to meet. I've even been brewing up a creative idea on how to serve expectant single moms that I hope to unveil in the near future.

So this is a serving summer for us...and I wouldn't have it any other way! Join in the fun and ask God how you can best serve Him this summer!