Lunch handout...

In an earlier post I explained a bit about our Jesus jar, but if you missed that I'll recap. Every week when the kids get their allowance, a portion of it goes into the Jesus jar. We have named it that so it's an easy reminder to the kids that the money in that jar is like tithing, and the goal is to use it to help others. A while back we had been talking to the girls about what we could do with that money. Brooklyn came up with the idea of making or buying lunches and handing them out to those asking on the street. So this Monday was a holiday and a day we wanted to do something as a family so we took some time out of our cleaning up and playing day, and hopped into the van. There was enough money for 3 lunches so we went out to buy those...a "lunch" here is actually something you can go to certain restaurants and order a "lunche"which is a small bottled drink and a sandwich kinda like a sub..they are really yummy. After we bought them we drove to one corner where there are usually many people trying to sell things, wash windows, or just asking for money. The girls were really excited to hand these out, or watch us hand them out as they can't really get out of the van in the middle of traffic so we handed them out our front windows. We immediately saw a mom with 4 kids sitting on the grass. LeRoy called out if they were hungry and they ALL jumped and ran to the van. We gave them 2 to share and their faces showed how grateful they were. What an amazing feeling to know we could help them out that day. They ate the food so fast...no hesitation about what we just gave them. At the same set of lights where we were stopped 2 guys starting washing our window even after we said we didn't want it done. Instead of giving the bit of change we normally give for this service we asked if they were hungry and gave them a lunch. The food was dug into before we hardly moved an inch.

What a great way to teach kids how we can serve God by helping others. They put the money into the jar, they saw us use that money to buy the lunches, and then they saw us giving the lunches out. We love seeing our girls' generousness and being able to teach them in different ways like this is a privilege.