Community Outreach 2010 eve

Hi everyone! Well tomorrow is the "big day!" Months of planning and preparation will all come to a giant culmination tomorrow at Community Outreach 2010 - Spring edition.
We have had 2 great nights, these last 2. Wednesday night many of those who are giving their day tomorrow to those in our community who need shoes or medical care gathered together to organize oabout 400 pairs of shoes which we have already purchased and to share dinner together. It was really a great time - it was fun enough to make you want to join in for July and October if you missed it!
Then tonight we gathered together for More than more. It was a fabulous time! We spent some time notcing outside - as we relied on each other's senses to see the world around us as it comes to life in Spring. We spent some time just noticing the world around us on the front lawn of McAllister Center and then we shared those tings and spent a little time thanking the God who made these things so wonderfully - like baby bunnies playing, birds singing, the feel of the cool grass between our toes and the wind on our faces, the sound of children laughing, the beauty of the late daylight (even if it was helped along by the government making us change our clocks)and even the sprayed on grass seed, getting ready to sprout - we were taken with the many colors and the life all around us! It was cool. We were challenged to notice these things in our day to day life - these things are not only present during this hour and 1/2 we call More than more every other Thursday, but they are there all the time. We need to be willing to once in a while, let go our of need to do so much and notice, and in that moment invite God to join us and thank Him for the amazing world He has given us.

We then spent a little time talking about the 7th anniversary of our disaster and victory in the Hendrick house. 4/1/03, was a day that forever changed our lives. Sophia was 8wks inside Melissa, who was at Toys R Us with 3 yr old Nate. She had a severe dizzy spell and got disoriented, but was able to get me on the phone. I went straight there and found here really unable to walk because of the dizziness and then on the way to the hospital really not making much sense. We went to St E ER and as they sedated her with some valium, I watched my sweet 29 year old wife's face droop on the right side. Well, 2 MRI's later came the news from my colleague, Dr Hoyer, "She's had a stroke." The words seemed to hang in the air like a bomb waiting to explode. Well, long story short, 6months of twice a day painful shots, and now a lifetime of Aspirin daily and my sweet wife is perfect - you would never know she had a stoke - except for the fact that out of that terrible experience, God remade and reshaped her - into an even more wonderful and beautiful woman than she was before!

Here's the take home message - it is easy to be inspired by the hope of Spring right now - buds on the trees, new grass, bulbs bursting from the earth, life is restarting all over! But, life is not Spring-like. Life is filled with pain - strokes and betrayals and Lupus and cancer and car wrecks and messed up backs, addictions and habits and hurts and pains and losses - it is often times more like fall or winter than spring! Not to rain on your nice spring day, but it is true - life is hard. The things is, this God we invite into the middle of our lives in this More than more group takes the pain and the loss and the hurt and makes spring - he is the great Creator - making all things new - just like He took Melissa and remade her out of her pain and heart break and loss and pain - He can take and remake you, make spring out of your winter. No, it does not erase the pain - Melissa had 6months of shots and a lifetime of remembering and our girls will have to fear whether that could happen to them when the time comes. But the newness and joy and wonder and peace and meaning and even peace that He brings out of the ashes of burned down dreams never ceases to amaze me. As I look around the group of people at More than more, I see a group of people who are being recreated, remade in beautiful new forms, by the same God who gives us this beautiful spring!

Tomorrow we will be sharing this newness and wonder and love with hundreds of our neighbors who cannot afford good shoes for their families or good health care or medicines. It does not seem like a burden or work to us - but rather an overflow of thankfulness to the God who has brought spring to our lives.

If you have experienced fall and winter, pain and loss and hurt, if you have been betrayed and kicked, if you have searched for joy and meaning and peace and have found none, and you find this More than more idea interesting, or inviting, we would love for you to join us April 15, 6:45-8:00PM, 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, McAllister Recreation Center.