Empty to Fill... Serve with Love

It's almost the end of Day 6, which means I'm in the home stretch of my 7 foods for 7 days fast!  Can't believe it's almost done, but excited at the same time for some good home cooked meals with fresh produce and meat this week!

I feel like I have a lot to catch up on from the past few days, so this might be a bit all over the place  :)

First let's talk service projects, since I promised that in my last post! So this month I have a bunch of service projects on tap, and I'm super excited about that. The whole point of emptying myself out a bit this month is so that I have room to fill myself back up with the Holy Spirit by serving and helping others.

Philippians 2:5-8

⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

On Saturday morning, I took part in "Sew Much More" at Life Point, where a bunch of people got together to make dresses for little girls in Haiti, Mexico, Brazil and China. The turnout was great and everyone was so excited to pitch in and make this day a success! There with people with all types of sewing abilities and many opportunities for those who didn't have any sewing experience - they always need people to help with pinning, cutting and ironing. The event was super organized, thanks to Julie, and very productive. I don't know exactly how many dresses were finished on Saturday... I think the goal was 250 and I wouldn't be surprised if we had met that goal! We were really flying through those dresses  :)  I especially love projects like this where I can use a talent God blessed me with to bless others!
 

This upcoming Tuesday, I'll be trying something totally different (and totally new for me!) and volunteering with the Nashville Food Project in their meal prep kitchen. This project could not be more perfect for this month, with a focus on food (and my goals of first experiencing hunger through a fast to remember those who are without food, and secondly to focus on eating healthy, homemade, local and fresh). If you don't know much about the Nashville Food Project, I'll give you a quick summary. Their goal is to provide healthy food to the homeless and working poor. They believe that everyone should have access to healthy food. In order to meet this goal, they have 2 gardens where they grow a variety of seasonal crops. They combine the harvests from these gardens with food that is donated for their pantry items and food that is gleaned from various farms and stores, and then cook this food up in their meal prep kitchen (where I'll be working this week) and then deliver it to the communities in need on one of their trucks. I can't begin to express how much I love this idea... fighting hunger with a low cost garden, the use of volunteers, donations of excess food from the community... and all of it to make a HEALTHY meal. I may have been hungry this past week with only eating 7 types of food, and I was certainly bored with my limited choices, but I was lucky and blessed because I was able to have a variety of produce and all fresh and organic items on my plate even if it was limited. How awesome would that be to provide that to another in need? The meals and food items that are normally donated to the poor and hungry aren't always the healthiest things... how often have you seen a box of macaroni and cheese or a can of processed soup in a donation bin? Most of the time, I bet. But here we have the opportunity to give fresh and healthy meals. I just love that! When I go there on Tuesday, I'll be doing anything from washing and chopping vegetables, slicing bread, making desserts and coming up with creative ways to turn their available ingredients into hot delicious meals. I can't wait to see how it goes and what I'll be doing! I may even turn this into a weekly thing depending on my experience. I would also like to check out the Journey Home in Murfreesboro and the East Nashville Cooperative Ministry as well.

Next up, and she doesn't know it yet (so I hope she's not reading this!) is making a small but meaningful donation to Heart of Worship's school lunch program this month. Heart of Worship is a school in Haiti for students Pre-K through 6th grade. The school provides them with a positive, encouraging and safe environment in which to learn. They serve the students lunch daily and that lunch is provided through donations that HOW receives. My hunger from fasting and from my desire to learn and grow and give has made me think often of those children this week. I've had a passion for them ever since I first met Carolyn and have enjoyed purchasing necklaces handmade from the children there for Christmas gifts for the women in my family last year, donated school supplies, sent a "Christmas box" to one of the children, and participated in a Sewing Bee to make students for the incoming Pre-K and Kindergarten classes this year.  There are so many ways to help! For a lot of the kids, that hot meal at school might be the only meal that they get that day, which makes it all the more important that the school is able to continue providing lunch to them. If you're interested in learning more about Heart of Worship and what they do and how you can help, please let me know!

The final one on tap this month is also through Life Point, it's one of their annual events called Sending Kids. This is a mission project where kids of ALL ages can come together with their families and help others right here in their local community. John and I are going to do this with Jackson, and even Sophia and Lily can help! It will be fun for us to all do this together and I'm excited for the kids to have a chance to participate in something like this. My bff, Council member, and partner in crime will also be joining me in this project and I'm excited about that too! I'm not sure what we'll do doing yet... I know 2 years ago they painted pumpkins and visited with the elderly at an assisted living home and then went to a low income housing community to do yard work, painting, and sprucing up. I can't wait to see what this year will hold and will be sure to update after this weekend!

A couple of last thoughts.... first in the spirit of serving others, I was really excited to see all the countries and missions trips announced at church today. Life Point is huge on being a "sending church" and is very active in both local and global missions. They had tables with information set up for all of the upcoming trips/countries this year... I saw a few new ones added like India and West Africa, along with many of the places they've been before like Bangkok and Brussels (Life Point has an actual campus in both of these places) along with Brazil, Mexico and Haiti. Now I'm not sure that I'll be going on a missions trip, but it's something I've given thought to and I've been thinking about Haiti for a while for a variety of reasons (even before going to Life Point) and had also considered Brussels as well. Even having seen it as an option in many places, Mexico never once crossed my mind. I have no idea why not, but just looking at the list of countries I had some immediate maybes and some immediate no's and Mexico was in the no pile (without any reason). Today in church, during a song that was totally unrelated to any of this... I had a tiny thought pop into my head out of no where... "why not Mexico, Kathy?". Good question. "You know you can still speak/understand Spanish pretty well?". Good point. And then I got to thinking about it and that really did make sense. I took 6 years of Spanish in high school, including AP, and then a semester or two in college as well. Granted, I forgot a HUGE chunk of what I learned, but I still have some pretty basic Spanish skills. I realized just the other day, actually, hadn't lost as much Spanish knowledge as I had thought when a form from Jackson's school got sent home in his folder entirely in Spanish. There was no English version with it and I wasn't sure if the form was only applicable to Spanish speaking students/parents or if there was an English version of the form too and he had just got sent home with the wrong version. So I did what any normal person would do, I emailed the teacher to find out I sat down and translated the form without any help and was able to translate the whole thing minus a word or two here and there. Say what?!? It's funny that I'm remembering that story now in light of the missions stuff from today, but maybe God set in my mind to really look that form over and "go for it" and remind myself that I do have that skill set. Anyway, today had me wondering how much more helpful or more of an impact could I make in a place where I could communicate verbally? Probably a lot! So in addition to stopping by the Brussels and Haiti booths after the service, I stopped by the Mexico booth too. I had an awesome talk with the man helping out there! There were nice people at both of the other two booths, but man he was just really excited and full of information (if you know me, I love details) about what they do there and what the trip was like. He said it was a great trip for getting your feet wet and it sounded like a really neat experience! This trip would be to the Yucatan Peninsula to serve the Mayan Communities and I believe they go in March, July and October (lots of opportunities). So please pray for me as I think about this and see what God's plans are for me. I'm feeling really really positive about this right now, so we shall see!

I promised a couple of last thoughts... so my second (and last last thought) is that plain dry chicken tastes infinitely better with spinach water poured over it. What is spinach water? Why that's the water you saute your plain spinach in that soaks up some of the spinach flavor. lol This may seem trivial, but it vastly improved my plain chicken's taste tonight! Of course I discover this on the 6th day! One more day to go! I've already busied myself with some food prep today since we picked up our CSA box this afternoon. I busied myself in the kitchen making homemade tomato basil sauce and carrot nut bread. This is going to be a good week!  

I'll end this with some of the lyrics to one of my favorite songs on the radio at the moment, "Proof of Your Love" by For King & Country, and a corresponding Bible verse to go with it.

So let my life be the proof,
The proof of Your love
Let my love look like You and what You're made of
How You lived, how You died
Love is sacrifice
So let my life be the proof,
The proof of Your love

1 Corinthians 13

The Message (MSG)

The Way of Love

13 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

² If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
^3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.