Serving With The Youth

Last week the Youth Group (Jr. High aged) participated in a service project at St. Anne's Center (one of two homeless shelters in Ogden). I had the opportunity to go along with the group as a chaperone. I believe there were a total of 18 of us that attended. We were all asked to fast for two meals, if able, work at St. Anne's for a few hours, and then back to the church for tacos. We were given a variety of jobs to do. Here some of the youth are taking large packages of diapers and making smaller packages to give to families with babies.
One of the more time consuming jobs was putting together mens/womens hygiene kits to distribute.

These lovely ladies were in my group. We were given the task of washing all the doors down and they did a great job. As you can see, they are clearly enjoying their work :)

More ladies in my group, washing doors. They worked hard...there's a lot of doors at St. Anne's and we washed EVERY SINGLE ONE!!! I told the girls this would get their arms buff for summer. I don't think they bought it.

This was a great service project to be involved in! Based on the conversation I had with the youth, and the conversation I overheard while working there and on the drive, I believe it was a meaningful experience for them. We are fortunate to have people at our church who are very committed to the youth and take the time to organize activities, like this, for them to be involved in. Sam absolutely loves his Youth Group and has lots of friends there.

On another note, my mom had a pacemaker put in last weekend. After her physician gave it a few tweaks on Friday, she seems to be much better. Unfortunately, right around the time she had her surgery, her husband, who has Parkinson's disease, took a turn for the worse due to a virus he'd caught. This resulted in him having some severe hallucinations, which can be quite scary not only for him but for all of us! Due to my mom not being able to drive post-surgery, I've taken them to quite a few appointments this past week and I think we're on the downhill slide from a very stressful couple of weeks.

Sam is running the local 4th of July 5K this year with us. He has started training with me, and I must say he has improved exponentially since last year when he trained for the same race. We started out by doing 1.5 miles around our neighborhood and he never even broke a sweat! We went out today and bought him a new pair of running shoes, so I hope I can keep up with him tomorrow!

I've finally been assigned some Hospice patients to work with. Fortunately for me, all three are in an assisted living center close to home. I'm looking forward to meeting them all tomorrow and Tuesday. I have no idea what to expect from this volunteer work, but I'm sure it will prove to be an interesting experience!