A Month of Service

Sorry it has taken me so long to post. We live near enough to the Joplin, MO area to be asked to help with clean-up and several other service projects to help those in need. Our church (locally) has designated the month of June as "A Month of Service". Our family typically does this anyway during our month interval when we take off from educational times. We typically take off July and December, focusing those months on service projects and our annual projects, as well as family trips. We decided to change our month of service to June this year, but keep our month "off" in July to coincide with various camps and youth conference that is planned for July.

The Sunday after the Joplin Tornado, a meeting was held during the last hour of our church meetings to give information about the way we can help, which included:

• Priesthood assignments with Mormon Helping Hands to clean-up.
• Visiting those critically injured that were moved to our city (The hospitals in our area are FULL and we have had public notices to go to Urgent Care instead of the hospital if at all possible.)
• Donating funds to the LDS Humanitarian Fund.
• Donating time to various organizations as we wish.
• Helping with specific needs for families in our church.

In all, we have been able to help with several needs and service opportunities. It has been an uplifting experience to visit severely injured people who have nothing, not even a pen and paper to write down their story of survival. As we talk with these survivors, they don't even know where to start. 

Now, most are waiting for insurance checks so they can purchase household goods and rebuild there lives.