Socks, Socks, Socks!

The night before we left Nicaragua during our devotions, our Missions Director told each of us that we were on this trip for a reason.  God orchestrated this group and for a purpose.  "Why were you called to be here?" she asked.  As I reflected on this, two reasons were laid on my heart.  One, was to be able to raise awareness to our ECC children and begin to impact our Children's Ministry in a more intentional focus on missions.  My thoughts today continue to be aflutter with many ideas and a new vision for promoting missions in my ministry!  I plan to kick off our focus in October... I can't wait!  Secondly, I believe that I was on this trip to begin teaching my family about the mission field.  I pray that I can instill in my boys to be obedient by loving the needy.  It is not an option, the Lord demands us to!
When you obey me you should say, 'We are not worthy of praise. We are servants who have simply done our duty.'"
Luke 17:10

That night, I prayed that the Lord would walk alongside of me and provide me with opportunities to continue on the mission field locally and in a way that I could do this with my young boys.

Well, it just so happens that once again, the Lord had all these details figured out for me :)  The day after we returned from Central America, we spent the day in our jammies just to relax, regroup and watch some TV :)  A commercial came on TV about a Disney movie that I really wanted to see.... The Odd Life of Timothy Green.  I decided to look it up on the computer to see when the release date was.  Not sure how I came across it but an opportunity fell in my lap.  I came across a website where A Gospel Rescue Mission was partnering with Disney and Hanes to collect socks for local Rescue Missions.  I began to do more research and there were NO collection boxes in Fort Wayne!!  Seriously, a city our size and this wasn't being promoted?!?!?!  The sock drive had started in June and was to run through September 3rd.  I didn't come across this until August 13th... not leaving me much time.  I wanted to try and coordinate with the ECC Children's Ministry and our Missions Team and go BIG with this but we simply couldn't pull it off that quickly!  I couldn't do nothing though... I felt that the Lord put this in front of me as an answer to my prayer to provide opportunities for my family.  So, I called and asked if I could do this project with my family instead of with an organization.  I knew that we wouldn't produce a ton of socks but I felt it would certainly still make a difference for our local homeless AND my family!  They happily agreed to help us get started quickly!  After talking to two local stores, Espresso Gallery and Webb's Hallmark, I was able to put boxes in their stores.

The collection started!  I put some posts about it on Facebook.  Bryce had to write a speech on why he should be voted for student council at his school.  So, I asked him, why should people vote for you?  Having Nicaragua still on his heart, he said "because I like to help people!"  So, his speech began to take root.  He listed all the ways that he has helped people in the past year.  Bryce put a plug about the sock drive in his speech, too!  He concluded his speech with, "As you can see, I like to help people.  If you vote for me, I will be able to help our school, too!"

Okay, I just love this boy!!!  Can I be proud here for a moment... he was voted in for Student Council!!!  So proud of him...  AND his teacher wrote me an email asking about the sock drive.  I sent her the details and she passed the info on to the Haverhill staff.  For two days, Bryce came home with his backpack stuffed with socks!!!  He was SO proud... those donations helped him have ownership of this project!  He really felt like he contributed because of his teachers... so ever grateful for the hearts of his teachers!

So, here we are tonight, counting up all the socks.  Rylan's role is to do all the counting :)  We are using M&M's to help him make the counting easier.  He's counting out one M&M for every pair of socks.  Once he had all the M&M's, he put them in groups of ten to help count them up easier!  So, how many did we collect?

Drum roll.....  The Hathaway's collected 202 PAIRS OF SOCKS!!! Bryce's role was to fill out the form that had to be emailed to Hanes.

Hanes is matching every pair of socks that was donated!!!  They will be sending their socks to the Fort Wayne Rescue Mission in the upcoming weeks!  That means that our local rescue mission will receive 404 PAIRS OF SOCKS for the homeless in our area.  This warms my heart so much!  We have been told by several people that socks and underwear are the number one items that are handed out to the homeless.  For those of you that donated socks, THANK YOU!!!

We have scheduled to drop off the socks on Saturday, September 22nd, and we will be given a tour of the Rescue Mission facilities.  I'm looking forward to Braydon, Bryce, and Rylan, learning yet again, about the less fortunate.  I pray that every time they are immersed in missions that their hearts become more compassionate and feel the need to be obedient to the Lord's call on us to provide for the needy.  Serving is our duty, I want my children to think of serving as a privilege :)

For you have been called to live in freedom, freedom to serve one another in love.  For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
Galations 5: 13-14