A day of service

On Nov 20th when the kids were put to bed it had just started snowing.  By the time Tim went to bed there were a couple of inches, and then by the time I joined him there was almost half a foot.  When Tim woke up in the morning to go to his leadership meetings before church, there was well over a foot, and we had no power. Oh, and we were supposed to be getting more snow starting in the afternoon.  He ended up clearing our driveway instead of attending his meetings, though he did call first...

As it turned out, in that meeting he missed they decided to cancel church.  Instead of a full three-

hour block of meetings we usually have, they cancelled the last two meetings completely and cut sacrament meeting (the main one) down from 70 minutes to announcements, opening song and prayer, the sacrament, a musical number by the choir, and a closing prayer.  It ended up being about 20 minutes long.  The request was that instead of sitting in our church meetings we use the time to help our neighbors dig out from the snow and make sure everyone was warm enough even without power. 

My parents agreed to take the younger kids and Tim, Alix, and I would help shovel people out.  We went home and got changed.  The little girls decided it would be more fun to come out in the snow with us though, so we got them ready too.  I took Jonathan over to my parents, then we started digging out our neighbors. 

The first house we did is just two doors down from us.  I have tried talking to the lady a couple of times, and she was really nice when we asked for a donation for the children's hospital, but other than that I've had a hard time getting a response from her.  Anyway, we started shoveling her driveway and when we were about 1/4 of the way finished she came home.  Apparently she had just gone and picked up her nephew to help her shovel since she knew she couldn't do it alone.  She was absolutely amazed that we were out there helping her.  They went to get their warm clothes on and find their shovels to come help us.  By the time they came back, we had been joined by four other guys from our ward.  We were able to finish her three-car driveway very quickly, and she was super impressed that we were there, especially since I was the only one she'd ever met.

By the time we finished that driveway, the little girls were done.  In fact, they were ready to be done before we started....They had gone down the street and were playing in the snow with Kaylee in her yard.  Alix had stuck with us though. In fact, she stayed with us and helped for over two hours as we all walked around the neighborhood shovelling out anyone we could tell needed help. 

It was hard work, and by the time we were all done, we were all very tired and sore.  I LOVED it though!  It gave us several really good opportunities to talk about service and WHY we like to serve others.  We also had more than one conversation about how everyone is a child of God and that He wants us to love each other, so he asks us to serve one another.  Overall it was a great experience :)