Back in November of last month my brother Todd was in town on business. He started telling us about a project he was involved with at his church with the youth there. They called it Making Jesus Famous. They basically were doing some outreach projects in their community such as work-days at Big Brother/Big Sister gyms, making cookies for firemen, and the like. Somewhere along the line someone printed up some T-shirts and the participation took off. They were doing simple things to include the youth and to encourage and engage their community. We all thought it was really cool.
For Christmas, Todd gave all of us some Making Jesus Famous T's. We were all excited. He asked us (or rather challenged us) to start the "Williamsburg Chapter" of Making Jesus Famous. And so we did. He also asked that we take some pictures, post them on the blog, and make sure that Jesus was being made famous in Williamsburg. And so we have! (At least the taking pictures and posting them on the blog...we will leave the results of becoming famous up to Jesus.
Our project for January was to go to the grocery store and purchase food for the local food pantry. We were able to buy two full grocery carts of food. The kids thought it was a lot. I realized that it would probably only feed our family of 7 for about 7-10 days. It was sobering.
We then delivered the food to the local food pantry FISH. This group serves the Williamsburg area. As the economy has stalled the past 12 months, their volume of clients has soared. For 2009 they saw a 30% increase in demands for food compared to 2008. They anticipate a great need this year as well. We were glad to help in a small way.
It was neat to see the kids get into the project. At the grocery store they looked for good deals as well as for items good to eat. Ben and Sarah even showed some concern for making sure we got some nutrition meals as well. Sam of course had the two best comments about the endeavor. First, he said, "This is fun!" Second, he said, "Daddy can we just buy the whole store?" What a great spirit to have...Lord, this is fun serving you, and can I give you everything I have?
And the T-shirts really helped. First they gave us a sense of purpose on our mission. Second, it invited comment by others...at least 3 different people commented on the shirts (hey, love the shirt). Third, it reminded us of why we were helping out, to Make Jesus Famous.
We'll keep you posted on next month's Williamsburg Chapter's MJF Project!
I linked this page up to our new MJF website, MZ-MJF.com So Williamsburg Chapter, whatcha gonna do next? huh
Posted by: Todd Hutchison | January 28, 2011 at 05:28 PM