Generosity Project - Part 1

Our church, Clear Creek Community Church, in League City, TX had asked its small groups to be a part of the Generosity Project. They wanted us to be creative within our small groups to come up with a way to reach out to others in our community and to help them in any way that we could. After Hurricane Ike hit, there were a lot of families in need in our area and our small group thought that helping one of the families out would be a great Generosity Project to do. We contacted a local church and asked if they had a family that was on their hearts that we could help and they did...so our group is working to put care packages together for the family with some items that they desperately need. When the family is ready to start working on their home, we will also be there for them to help out with labor.

Two weeks ago, our small group had set aside Saturday October 11th to work on the Generosity Project together as a group. We found out Friday night that the family we wanted to help would not be available to meet on Saturday afterall and that we would have to delay that part of our project by a couple days. Since we had already set this Saturday aside to work on the project, we didn't want to lose that day, so we decided to volunteer with ikeassist.org and go work on other people's homes that were devasted by Ike.

When Saturday morning rolled around, we found out that most of small group was not going to come and help out. Only one other couple from our group actually joined us for the whole time on Saturday to help others and one member joined us for a couple hours. We arrived at the church base at 8am and then arrived at our assigned house at 9am. We worked solid on the house from 9am to 5:30pm with only a handful of breaks along the way. When we arrived at the house the only work that had been done was cleaning it out and cutting 2 feet of the drywall off to air it out. By the time we had finished that day we had cut 4 feet of drywall off in each room, stripped the walls in the living room, ripped all the wood flooring out, pulled out all the bathroom tile and cabinets, cleared out the garage, bleached the garage, and put the items back into the garage. Plus, because the mold was so bad in the house, we had to wear respirator masks, protective goggles and gloves the entire time which made it hot and hard to breath.

So needless to say by the time the day was done we were absolutely exhausted and sore and had blisters!!!! The thing that absolutely made it entirely worth it was to see how much the home owner apprecitated all of us there helping her out and supporting her during this incredibly hard time, and to know that even though we would have rather slept in or watched a football game or whatever, this was the work that Jesus would have wanted us to do that day. To be His hands and feet on this planet.

Below are some pictures from our day. Our group members that showed up for the whole day were Luis & Amy Hernandez (Luis is on the far left and Amy is on the far right) and the group member that made it out for a couple hours was Bryce Jakub (next to Jared)...you can see them in the pic below of us all.

Finished...us at the very end of our day!!