365 Days of Service

Day 224 - Jan 23

Delivered my brownies to Lisa at work and then spent the day working on resources for OPEN. We have a lot of cool resources for kids we are working on right now trying to make them available as soon as we can.

Our friends who had asked me to paint the murals in their nursery had their baby this week and we went to the hospital tonight to visit them. She weighs in at not quite 6.5 lbs and she’s tiny and precious. I said quite a few prayers for their family over the past weeks since mom’s been really sick and feeling badly. I wanted everything about the birth to go smoothly and our prayers were answered! She’s a healthy baby and everyone is doing well. Ryan and I stayed with them for a while and prayed for the baby and this new beginning for their family. I love to see the miracles of God come to life.

If you can take a minute to continue to pray for our friends, their grandmother had a brain aneurism about the same time the baby was born. As of Friday, she was only expected to live a few days. Poor mom is upset she was in the hospital and unable to comfort her father and family. They were celebrating new life while God was making plans for their grandmother. Please pray for peace during this time.

Day 223 - Jan 22

I’ve been meaning to update my blog page with new links to organizations I support and value highly, so I took some time to add a new one: “Free Chains” and a link to their site today. Please take a look at this organization. It’s doing something about an issue, child trafficking, that I’m afraid too many of us know nothing about. I’ve been reading and listening to more stories about this problem and have a hard time believing this practice takes place even in our own backyards. Hopefully with the power of prayer and by spreading the word we will be able to have a positive impact. (After posting the link in my sidebar I heard from the creator of the Free Chains campaign, Greg Darley - very cool.)

I also got out the brownie pan again and made brownies for my friend, Lisa, and her family. It was my last opportunity to deliver them since they left on a sweet family vacation for a week. I hope they brighten their day!

Day 222 - Jan 21

Still trying to get over my double ear/upper respiratory infection so I took a very long nap and missed SWITCH for the second week in a row. I am going to make up for this day tomorrow.

Day 221 - Jan 20

I wrote a thank you note for our neighbor, the police officer who let us know about our mailbox, but I wanted to do something a little extra for him. Tonight I made him some brownies and plan to deliver them as soon as I can figure out which house is his. He said he “lives around the corner” but I’ve driven around the corner 3 times and haven’t seen his car in the driveway at any home. It’s been kind of like a wild goose chase since I think our schedules are very different. But I will find his house and leave the note and brownies on his front porch. I am NOT going to ring the bell and wake him up in the middle of his night - because somehow I don’t think he would appreciate it as much as we did.

I feel like a month has past by and I’ve slept or slugged through the bulk of it. Ear infections and stomach bugs and I’ve been sick for a long time. Recently, I came down with another set of ear infections and I’m just starting to get over it all. Here is what I’ve been up to recently:

Day 212 - Jan 11

Painted at our dear friends’ house in their new little girls’ nursery. She’s arriving this week and I can’t wait to meet her. See pictures here: http://www.twitpic.com/photos/alisondowdy. (P.S. I’ll have a new website up and running soon featuring my paintings and other work. Link to come!)

Day 213 - Jan 12

Started to really feel sick today, so I woke up from a nap and drove LifeChurch.tv donated t-shirts to Mercy Ministry. I would have stayed to do more but one of the awesome groups serving there had everything done and were headed out the door! I love knowing that there are others who share my passion for serving the hungry in Oklahoma City.

Day 214 - Jan 13

While I ate lunch I spent time at the Internet Campus worshipping and praying with people all over the world. They are getting ready to launch 3 new experiences and I’m going to get involved serving more during the week!

Day 215 - Jan 14

Had to miss my second week of SWITCH experiences because I was feeling so badly. I was totally bummed but after a good nap I made Ryan dinner and brownies because he’s always worn out and hungry when he gets home.

Day 216 - Jan 15

Our elderly neighbors have come by the house more since I started serving them more regularly. Recently, Dwayne came by and asked that I pick up his mail while he and his wife traveled to a granddaughter’s wedding. I stopped by their mailbox and grabbed their mail today.

Day 217 - Jan 16

I was working my second job this evening and I took a batch of brownies to give to a friend  - but she was home with a sick kid. So instead of yummy brownies, I gave their family lots of prayers for Mikah and Gavyn. I will keep praying for their entire family to be healed!

Day 218 - Jan 17

Ladies in the Oklahoma City area, mark your calendars for a free women’s event at the Edmond Campus of LifeChurch.tv. It will be Friday, February 27th from 6:00 - 10:30pm at the Edmond Campus location. Guest speakers, breakout sessions, great food and worship are all on the agenda for the evening. I’ve volunteered to part of the planning committee. We had a meeting tonight and I cannot wait to see what God does through the women who will attend!

Day 219 - Jan 18

Because I’ve been so down and out, it took a LOT longer to finish the murals at our friend’s house that I originally anticipated. After many hours working today I was finally able to finish and they are really happy with the results! They have asked me to work on another bedroom for their older daughter and I can’t wait to get started. It was a long day but so worth the hard work.

Day 220 - Jan 19

So Saturday night was eventful. An officer woke us up at 2:30am letting us know that someone at a neighbor’s party had driven through our brick mailbox and right up into the yard. Thankfully, no one was hurt and no other property was damaged. The officer explained that he had simply been pulling into the neighborhood to go to his home, when he saw the wreck. It was out of the goodness of his heart that he stopped to let us know what had happened, off the clock! How amazing people are sometimes, and so I sat down and wrote him a thank you note tonight. I’m praying for him and for the guy who smashed our mailbox - I already let him know that he was forgiven, but I seriously hope this accident was a wake-up call for him.

Day 211 - Jan 10

If you don’t live in Oklahoma (and have never experienced our wind) you would not understand how the wind is capable of blowing over a full trash can. It’s really amazing. You climb out of your car and if you’re not holding on tightly to the door - wham! It’s whipped out of your hand and nearly ripped off the hinges, or as in some unfortunate cases, connecting with the door of the car next to yours’. This happened to a truck I was driving when we first moved to Oklahoma - huge dent in the door when I came out of the store, and no note. I could not believe it.

Anyway, this is mostly irrelevent to this post other than to illustrate how crazy Oklahoma wind is. When I got home today, I noticed a neighbor had placed his trashcan on the curb for pickup. (It was a few days early, but we think he leaves town every weekend). I thought that if it was laying on it’s side for several days, there might not be any trash left inside it to pickup. I also think that the city will leave it there, since they use a truck that has an arm that picks up the cans and dumps them. I doubted whether the truck driver would get out and stand the can back up himself. So, I walked to his house and stood his trashcan back up. As I was walking back, I also noticed that his mailbox door was blown open (we also have this problem) so I closed that as well. Small gestures - but certainly something I hope someone would do for us if given the chance. Love your neighbors, right?

Day 210 - Jan 9

A good friend to many of us at LifeChurch.tv is leaving the offices in Oklahoma City to move to a campus in South Tulsa (Bixby), OK. She will be greatly missed! I spent some time tonight at Walmart picking out a card and a simple gift for her to encourage her on this new journey. I am really excited about the impact she is going to have on the community of Bixby and can’t wait to see what God has in store for her future. Jessica - you will be missed! God bless your journey (and your several moves!).

Day 209 - Jan 8

Today was a big day for Oklahoma - with OU playing for the National Championship. I’m not from Oklahoma, however, and I’ve never claimed to be a football fan. We had football games playing on our TV for the past week with Ryan watching each playoff game. He left town tonight to go to a friend’s to watch the game and to celebrate his friend’s birthday. I decided with him out of town I could get some work done on a mural I’m painting for a friend. She’s having a baby soon and I want to finish the mural as soon as I can. It’s turning out really well and I was able to get 3 hours of work done. This weekend I’ll go back to finish painting and can’t wait to see how it turns out. I think it was time well spent, since OU lost the game.

Day 208 - Jan 7

Tonight was my first opportunity to serve alongside Ryan and his team of pastors at our SWITCH (youth) experience at LifeChurch.tv. Ryan has been serving in that capacity for over a month and we’ve had several discussions about the setting, the evening schedule and the atmosphere at the event. In some ways, I thought I was prepared and felt that I knew what I would experience this evening.

Nothing unexpected occurred other than the fact that no one approached me to talk. The adult volunteers, the other spouses there, and the staff of the campus all came to talk to me and say hi. But not one of the kids in attendance approached me. It was a little weird. I did feel a bit like an alien. I guess I shouldn’t have assumed that a room full of students might find me interesting enough to talk to.

What was amazing was getting to serve alongside Ryan, getting to know the adult leaders better, and watching as 20 or more students raised their hands to accept Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. Wow. To say the least, despite what I may expect to happen, God will show up every week and I know I will get to experience something amazing.

Day 207 - Jan 6

I’m not going into detail, but I prayed with a man at the Internet Campus today. Just from the details of his story, and although he spoke very good English, I think he might have been overseas. That’s not the important point of this post, however. I was praying with him concerning his marriage, and more specifically, his wife.

His story is one that I hear more often than I would like to. Whether or not someone is a believer is a big issue in marriage, and can only imagine the struggles that take place when one spouse is a believer and another is not. I think this was the case with this man and his wife.

While we talked and prayed however, I was torn between praying specifically for his wife (as was his request) and praying for their family as a whole. Based on his testimony, it seemed as though his wife was the cause of their problems. It made me pause for a moment and seek God. It is so easy to hear one side of the story and assume that it is truth. In this situation I wanted to seek God so that I would be able to pray for their family in its entirety, not just assuming the facts from his point of view were “true”.

It was another good reminder that in all circumstances we must pause, seek God, and ask ourselves whether what we are hearing is in fact true. And in that moment, rely on the voice of God to guide our actions. After we had prayed, I felt positively about the impact our prayer would have on their marriage. I have to remember that God hears those prayers and that they serve a good purpose.