It is the Heart that Counts- Right?

There was a big mudslide about an hour north of our house that killed more than 30 people and devastated homes, roads, highways, and a community. One of the sisters in our ward at church has been helping in the cleanup efforts. She sought to organize a cleaning supply drive because when a disaster hits, people generally think food, which is great, but the real need, after talking to the Red Cross was cleaning supplies. So, with a Facebook post and email to the leaders of the various organizations in the church, the hope was to put together 500 cleaning kits. Last night. The catch was that if we could gather all the supplies by last night, Amazon would ship the supplies to the victims to arrive today. So, off we trudged to assist in the compilation efforts. B and I want our children to see service as valuable and to be quick to serve. After all, “…when ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God.”

So we got to the church at the appointed time and no one knew what was going on. The sweet sister who was running this wasn’t there and we couldn’t find the Mormon Helping Hands vests so we could collect donations. Finally, after 45 minutes, we figured it out and headed out to the store to see if we could collect donations. Nope- to ask for donations you must call the corporate office. Too bad that we didn’t know that earlier (although the organizer did) or we could have been very successful. Ok, go buy our own donation and head back to the church. By now the sorting had been done and there wasn’t much for our kids to do so we headed home.

 

Part of me wanted to be upset because if this had been a tad more organized it could have been even more meaningful and impacted more lives for good, but then I reflect on this and realize that even the small effort is what is measured by the Lord. My children gave up their recreation in an attempt to do good in the world. That is more important than numbers and whether or not this was a super well organized event. I hope that while it wasn’t perfect, it impacted them for good and someday they will remember that we step in and assist where we can.