It's been an amazing few weeks. Teams from Texas and Illinois did a roof, repainted a house, built a deck, and helped haul trash to the dump during a neighborhood clean-up. During Sidewalk Sonday School, they renewed old friendships with the children of Rolling Hills, where some of the youth remembered the children by name. I think only one of the children clearly remembered the team members (she introduced them to her cousin "this is Shayna, and that's Jake, and they got married last October!"), and a few others I think sort of remembered, but you could see that the fact that the team remembered them by name made the children feel really special.
They also took SWSS to a brand-new neighborhood. The roofing team was working in St. Michael all week, playing with the neighborhood children while they worked. One of the girls told me "We tried to do story time, but it was kind of a fail. The kids were like 'can we go play now?'" And play they did. They blew bubbles, sang songs, played duck, duck, goose, and gave piggyback rides, because they understood that building those relationships was just as important as the roof they were building. Some day, that roof will need to be replaced again, but those kids will always remember the love they were shown!We'd never done SWSS in that neighborhood, but this seemed like a good time to start.
We didn't really know what to expect. Would we have 6 children? 16? We really didn't know. I packed up snacks and craft kits for 60 and called it good.
Oh. My. Gosh! You guys, it was AMAZING!!! The team walked up and down the road, gathering up the children they'd been playing with all week, and those kids grabbed their friends, and we ended up with 50+ children that day! We went through ALL the snacks I took, plus ALL my back-up stash! They colored with sidewalk chalk, played basketball, read stories, gave more piggyback rides and had a great time. LOVED IT!!!
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