29,000 Chains

Wow, what a weekend! I can't believe it's Monday night already...it still feels like it should be Friday! Although we did do a few family things this weekend (family pictures-so fun and can't wait to show those-, the goodbye party for our friends, and a half-marathon- with a time of 2:03:26-a great run and I'm so grateful the Lord let me do it!) most of this weekend was spent preparing for and running our 30 HR fundraiser. 

  On Saturday, a few of the kids came over and we connected all the chains together that were stuffed into like 30 huge trash bags in our garage. We have been making paper chains for months and on Saturday we hit our goal of 29,000 paper links! These 29,000 links stretch over 7,000 feet (that's way over a mile) and took up the entire front of Walmart! The 29,000 links represent the 29,000 children under 5 that die every day from malnutrition. We wanted to make a representation of each one of those little lives in order to bring awareness to the community and to raise some funds. So after hours of stapling on Saturday (really hard to do outside, on a windy day with paper!) and getting completely  sun burnt we were done and stuffed them all into the back of Matt's truck. 

  Sunday morning, we drove the chains down to the church and made a presentation during the service. The kids did an awesome job singing the Prayer of the Children after carrying in all 29,000 chains into the church. After church, we had to carry all 29,000 chains back out of the church and into Matt's truck and to Walmart. We sat outside Walmart from 3-6 selling the paper chains and taking donations. It was really really really HOT, maybe in the 90's, but so worth every minute. The kids raised over $1,300 in donations! Praise the Lord! We are so excited. God is so good. We do have A LOT of paper chains left over but we have plans for those. 

  The kids even got their picture in the local paper...unfortunately the reporter put the wrong church and the wrong phone number in the article after putting the right church name at the top! Oh well... the Del Rio News Herald is not always known for it's literary accuracy! 

  All in all, it was a good but very busy weekend. We are just so so proud of our teens and are excited to see what God is going to do this weekend as we actually do the 30 Hour Famine! Pray for Matt and I this week when you think of us as we get all the final preparation done. Speaking of getting things done...it's time for me to head to bed or I'll be getting nothing done tomorrow. Hope you have a blessed week!