Giving

It has been an incredibly sad week here in our town. On Tuesday a few kids were playing with a lighter and started an apartment building on fire. A few of the apts were damaged from fire, smoke or water. Families went back and assessed the damage on Wednesday and then went back the the hotel that the Salvation Army had arranged for them for 3 nights. Thursday morning the building was totally engulfed in flames and was a complete loss. (Lesson: Always take out any insulation that might have been hot.) I don't know the exact number, but about 8 or 10 families have lost everything!

At least 1 person was a coworker of mine, 2 were high school students, many were families from the elementary school. From the news story, it looked like there were 2 girls who are 19 years old with children - my former students. One of them is a day care provider and lost her income at the same time. There are so many stories!

Friday night there was a note on the 10pm news that anyone could bring clothes to our church to donate to fire victims. We figured we would go to church on Sunday and could bring the clothes then. When we got to church there were 2 huge racks of clothes with more under the racks inside the doors. We were going to hang up our clothes, but that is where the women's clothes was hanging. Then we started to look for the coffee hour - there wasn't room for coffee and donuts - the tables were covered with clothes of ALL sizes! What an incredible problem! We have dinner and church on Wed night, and we'll need to bring coffee tables to eat on.

Someone suggested that the salvation army and red cross are low on funds, so they put out a basket - There were many checks and $20's in there! And then the bank will match any $ given to through the bank.

After all of that, we had planned to ask for donations for the ALS walk. I decided to go ahead and ask. . . They donated over $200!

It is one of those days when you think you don't really have anything special and then see how incredible humanity is. You leave church feeling lighter financially and spiritually!