Monday, April 8, 2013


Spring Break Book Business







To some folks spring break means beach trips, house cleaning and relaxing but to us it meant sorting through 47 boxes/bins of books. With the help of the Middleburg Black Creek Lions Club and a couple of dedicated friends we accomplished a daunting task in just 7 short hours (with no lunch break).  

We love volunteers!
Hard Working Helpers

I don't want to mislead you there was quite a bit of planning and preparing for this to get accomplished in one day. First a very sweet gentleman built us custom shelves, at no charge. The shelves house our overflow books. We also had to spend a little bit of money on some bins, just under a hundred dollars. Finally we had to set a date and put out the all call for some able bodies.



I have to say it feels great!  We now have a closet with books that are sorted into organized bins. We were also able to go through and purge some of the less desirable books. Now before we head out for our book bus routes we simply go to each labeled bin and refill any necessary books. A dream come true! Now all that is left is the ice cream truck. Let us know if you have one sitting around your yard.
Thank you Mr. Buddy for our shelves.
We even had a few leftovers book to donate to the rummage sale.

**Next Book Bus run is Saturday April 13th. Let us know if you would like to ride along.**



Monday, January 14, 2013

And we're famous, sort of.


In case you don't read The Florida Times-Union, you should know that we are a little bit famous. Okay, maybe not famous, even a little bit; but we have been seriously impressed with the article and the amazing response people have had.

If you haven't read it yet, you can check it out here:

We were front page!

We've had numerous people contact us about donations of all sorts (gift cards, books, etc.), and that has been amazing! We've had a few people say they would like to help us by volunteering or spreading the word about what we are doing. And we've had a few just " 'Atta boy!" kind of emails. It's been lovely!

And that momentum carried us through a very busy weekend. On Friday, we had another mom's gathering. One of our mom's from our first group came with her sweet little baby girl, and we had a new mom who is due in March attend as well. Mentors, mentees, and a lovely labor and delivery nurse sat around telling stories and talking about all things birthing and motherhood. We made some cute onesies for the new babes in the room and on their way. We closed with a sweet prayer, hugs, and talk of the next gathering.


On Saturday morning,  we were loading books at about 8:45 and around 3:45 we were shoving bins of books back in the closet. We finished the day pretty tired, but as I said on Facebook, there is no other way I'd rather spend my day.

We've quit keeping a formal count of people and books at Book Bus, but I would estimate we saw about 100 people over the course of the day, which means we gave away around 500 books. The McRae crowd, which meets us at Gadara Baptist, was not quite as large as last month; but I would guess there were still about 50 people there.





We also had a very special international guest at this weekend's Seeds of Grace events. Our family has had the privilege of hosting Ataro Alice in our home as she participates in a Teacher Exchange at the local high school, and while she is here she is investigating how we encourage parent involvement and looking for ideas that could be transferred to her country and culture. Who knows, maybe we're gonna go international! Ha.  




Partially because so many people have asked us about our needs and partially because it is that time of year when we reflect and plan ahead and dream; Teri and I have spent some time lately talking about what the next steps might look like. We still continue to dream about a place and a real bus/ice cream truck to enhance our current work, and we have also begun dreaming about new programs too (more information to come soon, we hope). The truth is, though, we need help just maintaining these amazing seedlings that have begun to grow. We continue to pray for someone who could help us get and remain organized. We continue to look for particular books. Currently, our biggest need is chapter books for second and third graders. And we continue to pray that God will guide every step we take. We do not want to be ahead of him or behind him, but right in step with what he is already doing.