Lessons

One of my favorite memories of this summer happened the first week I was in the Bronx. I had the idea for the kids to have a lemonade stand. A church group from Philadelphia was in town to volunteer with us and they helped set up a table in front of the Beekman Church. They helped the kids in each color group divide into two teams for the day. One team would stay at the table to help serve the lemonade. Meanwhile the other half of the color group would go up the block to ask people if they wanted any lemonade and tell them about what we would do with the money we raised. 

We raised funds to help an organization in Kenya called One Home Many Hopes (OHMH). OHMH is a home for girls and many of the girls that live there have come from the street or brothels. They provide not only a safe place for the girls to live but an education as well. Currently they are building a facility to have the space to take in more girls. 

The kids enjoyed participating in this project more than I could have imagined! They had so much fun asking friends and neighbors if they wanted any lemonade and getting to tell them who they were helping. Watching their faces light up every time someone would donate (no matter how much money they gave) was amazing. 

One little girl put it very well "we don't have a lot but we have more than they do and we should help because we have enough." Tears immediately came to my eyes as I listened to this precious child of God say exactly what we were trying to get them to understand. 

Throughout the day of our lemonade stand, the response from the neighborhood was overwhelming. People came just to donate, not even wanting lemonade. They just simply wanted to help someone worse off than they were. 

At one point while my orange group was working the lemonade stand a little boy walked up to me with a bag filled to the brim with change. He said "my family and I heard about what you guys are doing and we just wanted to say that we really appreciate it. It's not a lot but we got as much change as we could find and we want you to have it." Before I could even say "thank you" or ask if he wanted any lemonade, he quietly slipped away and went back to his home. 

We found out midday, that in the state of New York you have to have a license to sell anything on the street. As you can probably guess, we did not have one. We were so blessed the police came by and did not say anything to us. They let us stay. 

As I was planning this service project I didn't begin to imagine the support we would receive from the community. I really learned that the old saying "don't judge a book by it's cover" is true. I should not judge people by their neighborhood. I got to see people pull together to help others.