Well, so much has happened in our household that I could not even begin to recap it all, but will just talk about this past weekend.  Warning, long and rambling.

Our church youth group was involved in a weekend missions project called Engage.  The 137 students and adult workers served in 14 homes, and various charitable organizations around our community.  Groups of teens were hosted in church families’ homes starting on Friday night.  Saturday morning, they returned to the church at 9:00 am for their work assignments, which ranged from both the daytime and nighttime homeless shelters, the soup kitchen, the women’s shelter, to the Catholic Social Services food pantry.  In these places, the teens did everything from sweeping, to packing canned goods, to picking up trash along the block, to cleaning and scrubbing toilets and showers.  Other groups went to build a wheelchair ramp, rake leaves, clean gutters, dust for elderly ladies, to painting.  It was time for them to serve someone else.  As our youth pastor said, “it’s not about ME” this weekend. 

I dropped our teen and pre-teen at the church at 7:00pm Friday for their worship celebration.  At 10:30pm, I picked up five, seventh grade girls to be their “mom” for the weekend.   So, I’m a mom of three boys and a seven year old girl and I have nary a clue about middle school girls.  I asked my boys what they would want their host family to serve for breakfast and my oldest son said, “If you have girls, half of them won’t eat anything, and the other half will eat enough for those who didn’t.”  So, I went and bought a fruit tray and some hot chocolate, and the ingredients to make a breakfast pizza.  I asked the boys if I should buy muffins, or make them.  I am honored to say that they said, “make them mom, yours are much better than the store bought.”  Okay, so chocolate chip muffins it is.  Food wise, I was ready and willing. 

However, no one warned me that these girls would decide to stay up ‘til the wee hours of the morning.  We showed them the fridge and where the snacks were and basically left them to help themselves.  Honey and I heard them in the kitchen whispering, “There’s nothing with caffeine in here.”  (Yea!  They didn’t find that one case of soda with caffeine that we left in there.)  Honey and I knew that they would want to stay up late, so we were prepared for a one or two o’clock time frame.  The girls were playing board games and talking and being very good.  So, we went ahead and went to bed around 1:30 with the instructions to “not stay up too late.”  Now, these ladies were in the lower level where our boys sleep, and honestly, we cannot hear a thing down there from our bedroom.  So, we of course didn’t hear the screams (they asked us) or the squeals or the water running, or anything else that they did until 4:00 am (when they said they finally went to sleep.)  Now, we do know that there was shaving cream involved in there somehow for the first girl asleep, but no computer surfing (we have those upstairs next to our bedroom) and no TV (we have it locked for not turning on after a 11:00 pm.)

At breakfast, several of them, said, “no thanks” to eating until I said that they wouldn’t be eating lunch until after 12:30.  They politely put food on their plates and had girl talk around the table.  When I gave them the “five minutes until we leave warning” they all got up…but not to go brush their teeth, but to re-fill their plates (okay, so my son pegged that one.)  We arrived at the church within their allotted time frame (but not at the designated 9:00 am) So, I really wanted to volunteer in one of the places after sitting in on part of the worship service on Friday night, but to be honest, at that point, I could already tell that I would not be functioning well.  So, I went home and hubby soon hit the bed for a nap and I baked brownies to take back to the church for the 5:30 lasagna dinner.   At this point, I fed my other two lunch, and since my eyes were not wanting to stay open decided to lay down and take a nap.  (I was determined that I would not go to sleep before the girls again!)  When I woke up, I mentioned to hubby that we were just not getting much done today, and he looked at me and promptly went back to bed for a second nap!    

We had to have the lasagna, bread and brownies at the church by 5:30, so decided to just eat out for dinner with another family.  I returned to the church to pick up “my girls” at 10:15 and my poor Bubba was sitting there eating his pizza and looking like he could fall asleep in his plate.  Fortunately the girls were also looking more tired than the night before.  (And yes, this time we did hide the caffeinated soda.) On the way home the one girl who had gotten the worst of the shaving cream was begging them to leave her alone tonight. And there was talk of “revenge” if you get me back.  (Okay, I’m not going into the whole “social” atmosphere, but just thinking how sad to be the odd one out.)  I did remind them that my house was a rental and that I would appreciate it if they didn’t use the shaving cream again.  And, “why is it okay to do something to one person, but not be able to take what they do back to you without saying you’ll get revenge?”  (Okay, mommy hat on there) By 12:30 we knew that at least two of them were asleep and the lights were out.  However, we heard some water running and thought it best to at least stay up a little while longer.  I finally had to go to bed around 2:00, but honey stayed up watching a war movie until 2:30 and all was quite on the home front. 

Sunday morning, I didn’t wake up as early as I wanted and scrambled to get the muffins in the oven (blueberry this time) and mix up the pancake batter.  I hurried to wake hubby to have him get in the shower ahead of the girls and that he was going to have to be the head chef for the pancakes.  Noted to the girls, “Make sure you marry a man who feels comfortable in the kitchen.”  So the story from the night before was one of markers (washable, thank goodness; hence the reason we heard the water running) but a longer night’s sleep.  (Note to self…the chocolate chip muffins were a hit, the blueberry were not.)

It was so nice to have my boys back Sunday afternoon and it was a wonderful worship celebration Sunday evening to see the video from all of their hard work.  It was amazing to hear the girls and my boys talk about the sites where they worked and how they felt, knowing that they had made a difference this weekend in someone’s life. 

Teens praying over the beds that would be occupied by some homeless man or woman or child that very night—convicting

Homeless men waiting outside the shelter until the time that they could go in—tearful   

A woman who could leave her house without someone carrying her wheelchair—joyful

An elderly man whose leaves were knee high in his yard—caring

Lost hours of sleep?  Who’s counting?

It’s “not about ME” it’s about Him.

An Army of THE One