What about community service?

The last two Saturdays have found our family involved in some form of community service. It has been great for the kids to get involved and to see Dad and Mom get involved. It has also been good for us as a family.

Last Saturday our church and 2 other churches got together to put a new roof on a widow's house. I didn't really think that sort of thing was done anymore, communities used to do that sort of thing but it seems that people are more interest in what they can get out of something.

Anyway, one of the 90-something year old widows in our church needed a new roof and asked for help. The men and women were going to get together on Friday and finish it up on Saturday - but it rained on Friday. So Saturday morning the work started at 8:30 with the people of our church providing lunch. Hubby was there when the work started, the kids and I got there about 10:30 with some food - 1 gallon of corn and a chocolate cherry cake.

The kids and I got to work picking up the pieces of shingles that were on the ground and then Junior used a rolling magnet to pick up nails. While the kids didn't really do very much actual roofing, we were there until about 4 when the roof was finished. Daisy worked almost the entire time, Junior found another little boy about his age and played while he worked. At one point there were 50 people there working in some way so the roofing job went very quickly.

We had already signed up to help with the roof when we found out about Texas 4-H One Day. On October the 10th, 4-H had a one day volunteer effort where club members were supposed to do some kind of volunteer work, whether it was mowing someone's lawn or making someone a meal. So for our One Day effort, we helped in a roofing job.

Today our county did a community cleaning project. Volunteer teams were assigned areas to work - parks, road sides, etc - and asked to pick up trash. Our 4-H club did this last year and enjoyed it so we did it again this year. Since we have small-ish children working with us, we were asked to clean up around the softball parks - less of a risk with cars. The litter was appalling. In about 2 1/2 hours we filled 33 large trash bags with mostly beer bottles but also a large amount of plastic bottles.

The kids work hard at this but have a great time. Not to mention, I am sure they will think hard before they chunk a bit of trash into the woods.

Later tonight we have a concert that doesn't have anything to do with volunteering but is just fun. Charlie Hall is going to be performing locally so it should be a fun night.