Helping Young Moms and Their Children {Service Hours for Kids}

Rachel is working towards earning the President's Volunteer Service Award so she is earning a lot of service hours this year.  We are always looking for ways for her to serve in the community.  Our church, Valley Creek, has created the Next Steps Center to partner with organizations and schools in the community to see how they can best serve the people in our area.

The Next Steps Center has reached out to a local Young Life group and found a way to make an impact in the lives of young moms and their children.  The Next Steps Center and Young Life bring about 50 young moms together for dinner and support at the center twice a month.  These moms range in age from 11 to 23 years old.  The Next Steps Center is also creating a Baby Needs store where the Young Life moms can shop for maternity items, baby clothes, big kid clothes, etc.  There are some new items but most of the items are gently used and offered to the moms for free.

The store is rather new.  This is a cute shot of the shopping area.  But they have received tons of bags and boxes of donated items that were just piled up in a spare room off to the side.  So Rachel and two of her friends from American Heritage Girls signed up to help sort the items.

They first sorted the items into 4 categories - girls winter, girls summer, boys winter, and boys summer.  Once that part was done, they went back through and sorted each category into sizes such as girls winter age 0-6 months, girls winter age 9-24 months, etc.

We were there for four hours but in the end the storage room looked so nice and organized!  Rachel felt good knowing that she helped to make this happen.

This experience was great for me too and I plan to reach out to see how I can help serve the Young Life moms on a regular basis when they come to the Next Steps Center.  What amazing things can happen when two great organizations like these come together to be the hands and feet of Jesus!

Blessing Teachers at Christmas {Volunteer Opportunities for Kids}

One of our recent volunteer opportunities was through Valley Creek Church's Next Steps Center.  The Next Steps Center has partnered with a local public school and we have let them know that we are here to help the school, its teachers, and students, in anyway we can.  As one way to serve them, the Next Steps Center recently hosted a Christmas party for the teachers and staff of the school.  The more we can love on the teachers the more they are filled and nourished to love on the children.

Rachel and I volunteered as greeters for the party.  We smiled and welcomed everyone in.  Rachel did such a great job!  Everyone that came in was so nice and friendly.  We even saw our previous next door neighbor whom we love dearly.  I knew she was a teacher in LISD but she was at a different school the last time we talked to her so it was such a surprise to see her!

The party was a success.  They had delicious food and a fun auction.  Everyone seemed to have a great time.

As guests began to leave, we were told to bless each of them with a candy filled apple and a copy of our pastor's amazing book, Follow the Cloud.

Tied to each book was a special invitation to attend our Christmas services.  I do pray that this reached some of those sweet teachers and they are able to come to one of our services.

Rachel and I enjoyed our time with our fellow Next Steps Center volunteers as well as the teachers from the school.  Serving others has been such a blessing for us during this Christmas season and I love finding ways to serve alongside my children.

What an Amazing VBS!

My kids always love going to VBS in the summer.  They have fun with friends, play games, have yummy snacks all while learning about and worship our great God.  

But this year, Nicholas is too old to go to VBS.  I was devastated when I went to register him and it said Kindergarten through 5th grade.  He is entering 6th grade this year.  But as I looked around the website a little more I realized that in 6th grade he can volunteer at VBS!  Woo hoo!  Not only would he still get to be there for all the fun but he would actually be a part of sharing that love with younger kids.  Amazing!

For the week before VBS actually started, Nicholas went to church every day for about 4 hours at a time to help them turn the whole inside of the church into a magical place of wonder for "The Great Voyage" theme this year.

He worked on turning a hall into the inside of Jonah's whale.  See the back bone and rib cage?

Another hall was a boat on the ocean.  I love the waves made of blue vinyl tablecloths and the tops cut off of white plastic drinking cups.  So creative!

And how can you save money on decorative life saving rings?  Buy white stryofoam rings and paint red stripes on them!

Nicholas also got to make and custom decorate lots of paper fish to swim in the ocean.  He had lots of themed ones....a school fish, Iron Man fish, Captain America fish, Hulk fish, Pokemon fish, popcorn fish, smiley face fish, etc.  He definitely had fun with this part.

The kids are divided up into groups and Nicholas would be one of two leaders for a group of kids.  There are several different animal characters in the program so the kids are first assigned an animal then they are subdivided by colors.  Nicholas had just said that he hoped that he didn't get put in the Zoe group and just minutes later I got an email from the church saying he was in charge of the Zoe Brown group.  I asked him why he didn't want to be in Zoe and he said because Zoe is a girl character and she is a very pink flamingo.  But he handled it well and even came up with some good responses if he had younger boys in his group who complained about being in the pink flamingo group.

Monday rolled around and he was excited to see how his first day as a VBS volunteer would go.

Rachel was attending as a participant and she just loved that the hallway into the main sanctuary was made to feel like you are in the ocean.  There was blue fabric and fish hanging from the ceiling, bubbles galore, and fun music playing!

Inside the sanctuary, the energy was bubbling over.  How exciting for these kids. God will do amazing things here this week!

Rachel was in Bo Orange group.  Her leaders gave them orange bandanas to wear and painted blue on their faces to look like Bo the shark.

When I picked her up, she asked for some coins to donate to the VBS mission outreach.  She was so excited to add her coins to the big jar on stage.

Rachel has been carrying around some post card invitations to VBS and she cut one of them up to make it into a puzzle.

Bubbles, bubbles, everyday!  How could you not be excited to walk through this many bubbles each morning!

The main lobby held a giant 15-20 foot ark for Noah with each of the animal characters aboard.  

Nicholas asked to go to Party City to get some spirit items for his team.  We found this awesome pink flamingo which I thought for sure he would refuse to hold because it is pink.  But I was wrong.  He wanted to be a good leader and get his team excited and that was more important than his dislike of the color pink so he got it.

He also got some brown bandanas for his team, some crosses that we made into necklaces, and some whistles for them.

I noticed that they had decorated the outside of the Jonah's whale hallway to show that you are going inside the whale's mouth.  So cute!

And inside the whale was complete and lit with a black light that gave it an awesome glow.

I just love our church's Children's Ministry and how to go above and beyond to reach the next generation.  It has been so much fun watching all these kids each day.  They are excited about the Lord, making Godly friendships, and having fun together the whole week!  Here is one of the songs that our church wrote for this VBS.  There are even some little dance moves that go with it.  It was amazing to be in the room watching 600 kids and 1200 volunteers singing and jumping to the music!  You can get a glimpse of the excitement from this video below:

Rachel and her leaders.  

Tomorrow night we all come back together for a big fun family night outside with bounce houses, water slide, a petting zoo, and more!  We can't wait!

VBS at Valley Creek Church

Nicholas and Rachel were so excited to start the week off at Valley Creek Church's VBS.  The theme this year is Epic! Wilderness Survival.  The church has been transformed with handcrafted trees, animals, and even an underwater adventure.  It's amazing!

The first day, they got assigned to tribes.  Each tribe was based on one of the main animal characters and then they were also assigned a color.  Rachel was Rocky (which I think is a hamster) and Nicholas was Humphreys the camel.  They each got bandanas to show they team's color but Rachel let her teacher keep hers so she didn't have to worry about remembering to bring it each day.

On Wednesday, we brought a friend home after VBS for a playdate.  They got to ride in Stuart's truck since the van was having transmission problems.  They had fun in the big truck!

The kids have had a great time learning about Jesus, meeting new friends, playing games, making crafts, and singing songs.

Tonight was Family Fun Night to wrap up a great week of VBS! The kids love riding in Daddy's truck.  Our van has big side doors that open and close but the kids don't have windows they can roll down.  When they ride in the truck, they love to roll down the windows and feel the wind on their faces.

The church had an incredible number of fun activities for the kids.  Rachel loved riding the ponies.

And the petting zoo!

But I think her favorite thing was the Boogie Woogie Choo Choo Train!  

There were three giant inflatable water slides, a velcro wall, an inflatable knock-em-down challenge, an inflatable wrecking ball, and even a zip line!

The kids both loved the giant hamster balls!  Rachel was the first to try it.  I was amazed at how well she did considering how small she is.


And of course, Nicholas could hardly wait for his turn!


What a great week at VBS!  Thank you Valley Creek!

Soul Sisters Easter Outreach

I'm a proud Soul Sister!

Soul Sisters is a weekly Bible study at Valley Creek Church. I just started in January but some of the women at my table have been attending since the group started many years ago. It has been neat because you sit at the same table each time so you really get to know your little group of women, even though there are 700 women in Soul Sisters.

Soul Sisters is a phenomenal group and the message this semester is incredible. It's a Beth Moore (love her!) Bible Study called Inheritance. The key phrase throughout the message has been Psalm 16:5-6 "The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance" Check out the trailer for the series HERE.

Tonight's session was a little different than usual. We started our session with our usual worship music but then instead of our Beth Moore study we worked on our outreach project. For Easter, we worked on an outreach project and delivered gift baskets with necessity items as well as toys and Easter items to families in need in a local apartment complex. Everyone brought items to donate to the baskets and each table had two gift baskets to make. At our table, we divided up the recommended donation items so that each person brought three items for each basket. We even decorated the baskets to make them look awesome!

Aren't they cute?!

I love my Soul Sisters!

Once we finished putting our baskets together, our table piled into an SUV and headed over the apartment complex to make our deliveries. It was amazing to see all of the Soul Sisters walking around this complex with their baskets of love bringing the message of Jesus out into the community.

If you'd like to find out more about Soul Sisters, you can find more information HERE.