The world says "get", God says "give"

Last Sunday at church they talked a lot about mission trips and covered the who, what, where & why of it all. Then during Children's Time, Nicolle talked about how much emphasis there is today on getting, having, buying STUFF. Some people from our church recently did a mission trip to the Dominican Republic and worked with the children at a school there. The school is put together with a bunch of sheets of corrugated metal and not much else from the looks of the pictures we saw in the slideshow. We're trying to collect money to put towards building them a new school there. Nicolle gave everyone a jam jar & asked the kids to fill it up with pennies and to bring it back next week. Our jam jar has been sitting on the counter ever since.

Suddenly today, Honey remembered we were supposed to be filling up this jar and wanted to know what we were going to do about it. They remembered all about the kids there & their school needing a new building. I suggested we all get out our money & see how many pennies we had. They weren't too sure about that at first. Then we talked about what we have and how we can share with others who aren't as blessed as we are. They decided they could share some of their pennies and ran to get their banks. I thought I'd get them to put in a few pennies and then raid Murray's can of coin he's had forever for his pennies. The next thing I knew, they were eagerly chucking in ALL their coins! Honey kept saying "we have to fill it up!! we have to fill it up!" For girls that were hesitant at first, they got incredibly generous as they got into it. I suggested we check Daddy's coins for pennies and we put their money away. They helped sort out the pennies from the other coins and eagerly added them to the jar (no hesitation with Daddy's money! lol). We got out my wallet & took all the small coins from there. Our jar's still half empty but we phoned Grammie at her bank today & ordered some more pennies that will hopefully fill the rest. While we were on the phone, they filled her in on what we were doing, who the pennies were for & what they were going to do with the money. Then when Murray got home, they explained it all again for him (he was babysitting Mr Bojangles when we went to church on Sunday).

We've had a few opportunities to participate in something like this, giving to someone else in need & the girls see it so simply! We have, they don't, so share. That's it. How could I not be proud of these kids?????