A glimpse

Book Bus is always fun. I enjoy meeting new people and seeing familiar faces and having little chats with people of all ages about what they like to read or why they have never liked to read. It is intriguing and insightful and interesting to hear people's stories.

But then there is always at least a moment, a glimpse into the brokenness and the hurting and the poverty. Mother Theresa is credited for having said "The most terrible kind of poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved." Sometimes when you are bent over a crate of books with a child you notice their hands are too dirty, and you wonder if they feel ignored. Or sometimes you find yourself talking to a grown man who says something that is inappropriate and you wonder how long it has been since he's had an honest and trully intimate conversation with anyone.

I've been hesitant to write about much of the brokenness we have seen, because I don't want to give a stereotype to a whole neighborhood. I don't want to cast judgement on a single person. We don't know any of our new friends well enough to know how they got where they are. And not everyone we meet is living in poverty.

The thing is...when we go to High Ridge for a Book Bus trip or anything else, it seems like the things of life are just magnified there. Love and Joy and Connection seem grander, and hurt and hate and pain seem bigger.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the bad, painful things in this life. I'm a fixer, and I'd like to make it better for everyone. What I have to remember, though, is that isn't really my job. My job is to do the little, tiny things that God asks me to do...pack up some books, listen to people talk, pray...and trust that somehow God will use those tiny little things in his big, grand scheme of redemption.

There are just days when I wish I got more glimpses of redemption than brokenness, and today is one of those days.

The Magic Book Bus

This weekend marked the January run of the BOOK BUS. We layered our clothes, cranked up the heaters and pulled into High Ridge with crates filled with books and thermoses of hot chocolate.  Even though the air was cool, the sun was shining and attendance was good.  At two of our stops we actually had customers waiting on us (are they customers if the books are free?). Picking out your 5 books is serious business. Often times, there is consultation with a friend or at least the person leaning over the crate next to you. It’s fun to get down there with the kids who may feel a little shy and draw them out with a good Junie B. or Amelia Bedelia book. Before you know it they are requesting books and Carey and I are realizing we have got to get that closet organized. The books are plentiful but the workers few. J I have to say the biggest thrill I get is the kids that say, as they walk away with their books in hand, “See you next month.”



Crates ready to go!



First customers of the day

It was just what he was looking for.

Checking out the chapter books

This Saturday

We are gearing up for another book bus run. We have posted our signs around the neighborhood so people will know when and where, and we will be passing out some flyers.

Saturday morning we will go to our very scary closet, load up our boxes of books, drive to High Ridge and give away as many books as we can.

So...hold on until then, and I hope I will have some good stories and pics to share.

For those of you who are following (officially or unofficially) us, we really appreciate it!

Waiting

I don't really enjoy the waiting stage. I know it is part of life, but I'm still always looking for the action. I've always loved that part in Dr. Seuss' Oh the Places You'll Go about the waiting place.

Anyway, we are in that stage, waiting...waiting to get some info from the zoning department, waiting to find the right location, waiting for the right people to come alongside us.

We aren't passively waiting. Teri and I do what we can until we get a place. We do a lot of praying and thinking and talking and dreaming and debating and then more praying. And we do some reading and researching.

Not to long ago, we spent a day at an amazing place called Grace Place in Naples, FL. Stephanie Campbell, the director of Grace Place, was more than generous with what they have learned. She lent me a book entitled Good to Great, and I finished reading it over Christmas break.

The author, Jim Collins, says that if a non-profit wants to be great, it must answer three questions.

1. What are you deeply passionate about?
2. What can you be best in the world at?
3. What drives your resource engine?

For the past few days, I've been in the waiting place with these three questions. They are big, deep, difficult-to-answer-honestly questions. My waiting space is feeling a little crowded. At the same time, I know they are important questions, and I hope I have the discipline and perseverance to wait it out and find the best answers. I am also so thankful that I'm not waiting alone or left to find the answers on my own. I have an amazing group of friends and family whom listen to me blabber as I  try to process all of this out loud.

Check out www.graceplacenaples.org. They are living the dream, at least what Teri and I dream Seeds of Grace could become.

Hope I didn't keep you waiting. When I tried to post last night, I had some obvious technical difficulties.

A fourth century challenge

I use an awesome prayer book, called Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro. A few days ago, there was this quote from Basil of Caesarea, "When someone steals a person's clothes, we call him a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to those who need it; the shoes rotting in your closet to the one who has no shoes. The money which you hoard up belongs to the poor."

Our statement of purpose

Seeds of Grace exists to provide educational opportunities and life-enriching skills for at risk children and impoverished families in High Ridge Estates, and to foster relationships among all people looking for a new, more grace-filled way to live. 

Seeds of Grace is a faith-based, non-profit neighborhood center which provides excellent educational programs at no financial cost to families to encourage the overall development of children in need. These programs focus on school readiness and academic success, life enrichment via mentoring relationships and new experiences. The outcomes will be (1.) children who grow up to be literate, emotionally and physically healthy, and productive members of society and (2.) volunteers who see the ways their lives are impoverished if they don't connect to the families in need next door.

We should probably mention that everything is a work in progress and subject to change. We believe this statement captures the heart of what we are planning, but we may still end up making some adjustments as we become more aware of the needs of the neighborhood and how our talents and passions best intersect with those needs.

The beginning

It is difficult to know where to start in our story. We have a lot to tell, but really we probably have only lived a short chapter of this story. What has been exciting and amazing to us, when we try to explain it may be dull and meaningless to you. 

One of the things that amazes me most about our story is how this story began without either Teri or I knowing. I had been serving as children's pastor at a church for a few years, but God started to impress on me that it was time to find a new way to minister, a way that was more involved with the "outside world" as I called it at the time. So, I applied for a job at our local elementary school. I applied for a classroom assistant position and was hired to work in an ESE classroom. I found out that I would be working with Teri Sapp, whom I had met a few times, but did not really know. It didn't take long to find out we were kindred spirits.

At about the same time Teri and I were starting to get to know each other, God started to open my eyes to some of the things that break his heart in Keystone Heights, our tiny little town.  We began to talk about what our community and school and students might need. We talked and dreamed about different ways we might could begin to follow God more fully and join Him in the work He wants to do in our community. One day we were driving through High Ridge Estates, a neighborhood where many of our students live, and Teri said, "You know what I've always wanted to do...I think it would be really fun to drive around this neighborhood like an ice cream truck would, but instead of selling ice cream,  I'd give away books." We both laughed, and then I think we started talking about something else.

Later that night, the ice cream truck with books haunted me. It was a good idea!

Over the next few months, we talked and dreamed with anyone who would listen, and then we made a plan for the summer. We emailed our school faculty and a few others to say we would love to have some used books. At first we thought we wouldn't have enough, but then we were flooded with books. 

We gathered a small group of volunteers, advertised in the neighborhood, loaded up our trucks, and drove to four stops in High Ridge. Last summer, we made a book bus run every other Saturday, and during the school year we have tried to go once a month (although we have had some weather issues). 

We aren't exactly sure what God has planned for us, but we are working on non-profit status, and hoping to find a piece of property in High Ridge where we could offer some tutoring for students and encouragement for their families. In the mean time, we are thinking of creative ways we can bless our students and families living in High Ridge.
Have you ever asked God to show you what breaks his heart in your community? What did you find? And how did He invite you to join Him in his redemption story?