Throughout my life, I’ve been actively involved with groups that constantly stepped out of their comfort zone, to do things to help others. Assisting at homeless shelters, mentoring for at risk youth in high crime areas, sharing our garden produce to those in need… things like that. Helping others feels great.
For myself, it seemed the natural thing to do. When it came to giving, my parents have always been great role models. It’s something they’ve always done, and as a child it was how my brother and I were introduced to many of the activities I mentioned above. So yes, they passed on that spirit of helping others onto us.
I do have a confession to make, for about a year now, I haven’t done too much reaching out. Naturally, I’ve helped at school that’s not going to change, I’m very involved with my daughter’s life. Her teachers have always known that I’m a phone call or email away. That’s one of the perks of working from home. I can usually assist them — if I have advance notice. However stepping outside my ‘comfort zone’ wasn’t done as much.
I had the typical excuses…
I got wrapped up in several business related projects. I channelled so of much energy and time into those endeavors, outside of my family, I stopped doing many of the things I enjoyed. Looking back, I didn’t feel great about it, and discontent crept up in other aspects of my life. At the time I wasn’t sure what was wrong — until a few months ago when it dawned on me that reaching out was a major part of my enjoyment, and so I started looking on what I could do to change.
The church I’d attended wasn’t as active within the community as I’d like, and so I found myself looking for another church, and I believe I’ve found one. Although it’s s small step, joining the quilting group at this new church is a great move.
I mentioned the group briefly in one of my crafting posts. When I checked out the church website, I was happy to learn that this quilting group is part of the Lutheran World relief which donates their hand crafted quilts to people all over the world.
Lutheran World Relief works to fight poverty and promote a more just and peaceful world by helping people help themselves. Your support provides the foundation for LWR’s work.
Naturally, I clicked on through, once I’d read the information on the church’s site. I never heard of Lutheran World Relief, but their website was very informative. It surely made my heart happy reading the above statement.
As an adult, I’ve mainly gotten involved with various outreach organizations on my own, but it’s surely nice to be part of a church that (that just so happens to be a church that I’m very interested in joining) does outreach on a local and global scale.
You want to know what’s even better? The lady I knew I’d miss most, at the church where I’m a member now is part of the quilting group at the Lutheran church. I didn’t know it until I checked out the picture they had of the quilting group. It looks as though I’ll be the youngest lady in the quilting group, it seems that most are retired, which makes it even better since I’ve always enjoyed interacting with those much older than myself. I’ve learned a lot from them.
What I enjoy about the new church is there’s plenty of opportunities to get involved on the local and global level. I’m sure over the next several months; I’ll be writing about various other outreach programs I have joined.