It has been amazing watching how God has provided each step of the way for the Big Give Project. So we asked the members of both Faith-Highland and New Life to give one dollar to go towards this project so we could do something extra to bless the family we would be working with or others in the area. Our goal was to raise $500 and we got $1614! So Sunday night we talked about being listening ears to stories told by our resident and looking for things that she might need help with. Monday night we spent some of our small group time talking about ideas and then praying for God to show us how we can bless people with the funds we raised. Tuesday morning when we got to the house and Terry was talking to Georgia who was commenting that her air conditioning wasn’t working so we got the group together to vote if we wanted to help her with this need. The kids all said yes like it was not even a question. We told Georgia to call a repair man and we would take care of the bill. The repair man showed up about 10 minutes before we were about to leave for the day. The part for the air conditioner was an easy fix and he had it back running quickly after giving it a cleaning. But while he was looking at the air conditioner he noticed that a very vital part of her heating (can’t remember the part) was cracked. Legally he had to turn off the heater portion of the unit so it would not turn on because if it would run it would be blowing carbon monoxide into her house. So he gave us a ball park figure what it would cost to fix the heating part and we gathered the group to vote again if we wanted to take care of that for Georgia also. They all looked at us like of course why wouldn’t we. So we set it up with the owner of the repair company Wednesday who was able to give us a little more accurate estimate to bill us for both repairs. The total will be about $1100. The amount we raised over our goal! As we were talking about the details after in our group it was amazing to see how God worked in all of them. The fact we raised the extra money and told her to call an air condition repair man who found the bigger issue of her heat while we were there to cover the cost that she would not have been able to cover. She probably would not have called a repair man all summer and wouldn’t have know the heat was broken and it could have been fatal.
So we had about $500 left to do something with. While discussing different ideas one of going to a grocery store to pay for people’s groceries was a favorite of the group so that is what we did Thursday afternoon. We went to a store just down the street from the school we are staying at. We told the manager what we were doing and asked for permission, she was all for it and completely shocked that we wanted to help people out. Before we started we took a moment to pray and ask God to show us who to help and bless what we were doing. So we split the kids up in pairs and gave them $60. They stood by the cash registers looking for people to help out. They went up to the customers told them they would like to pay for part of their groceries, many of the people asked what the catch was or didn’t really believe them. Some people politely declined and said there are probably people who need the help more than they do but still thanked them for what they were doing. All the cashiers were really shocked at what we were doing and thanked us for helping people out. Some of the kids helped bag the groceries and carry them to their cars. We had one woman say that she told her kids they will never get anything for free in life and she now has to tell them she was wrong. There were moments again of how God worked in all the details. There was one time 3 groups pooled the change together and it was the exact amount of the next person they helped. We had the right amount with $0.50 to spare for the very last person, a dad with 2 young girls that we saw come into the store and were kind of waiting to come through the check out. We used the $0.50 to buy the girls a gum ball. I think the reactions from the customers surprised the students as much as the customers were to be getting some groceries for free. It was a great day.
Vida & Encounter 