I’m going to miss our home fellowship group the most. I have often felt like I don’t belong to things or fit into groups, but I have come to love each and every person in our Sunday night Home Fellowship group and I appreciate their tolerance and acceptance of me and it will be hard not to connect with that every week. I belong there. At last and for once, I know I belong.
Today we did a service project – just showing a woman we don’t even know the love of Jesus by doing a lot of work to her yard and in her house. All of us gathered over at Shelter Bay for a beautiful spring day of sprucing up her place and I’m so tired now I can barely type a word, but it felt good. We were all proud to be part of being the hands and feet of Jesus today.
Today we did a service project – just showing a woman we don’t even know the love of Jesus by doing a lot of work to her yard and in her house. All of us gathered over at Shelter Bay for a beautiful spring day of sprucing up her place and I’m so tired now I can barely type a word, but it felt good. We were all proud to be part of being the hands and feet of Jesus today.
Here's the article I wrote about it for our church newsletter:
Extreme Home Fellowship
We have been blessed the last two years to be part of the BEST home fellowship group Bethany has to offer (OK, I’m partial because I’m part of it, but still… it is a good group!). We meet every Sunday night for soup, salad and bread – all 14 of us adults and 15 kids. Jason and Benita Rozema host the event and we all chip in for a babysitter so we can have uninterrupted adult conversation revolving around our relationship with Christ. We always start the evening off with a “getting to know you” kind of question, even though you’d think we’d know each other pretty well by now, but we always learn something new every week, so we keep doing it. One week the question was, “What kind of volunteer work have you done?” and in hearing some of the surprising answers, someone suggested we should do a volunteer project together. There was a hearty round of agreement and in minutes the Thulens suggested a single mom they had heard of that could use some help around the yard and needed a few small home repairs done. We picked a date and the deal was done.
On Saturday, April 26th, we set aside the entire day to bless this woman that none of us knew (her daughter was good friends with Debbie Thulen’s niece). God gave us a wonderfully sunny day to carry out our task. Besides massive yard word, the list of tasks involved repairing some door hinges, minor plumbing repairs and replacing wood damaged by a leak. My ever-so-handy husband, Kory Slaatthaug, took care of the inside jobs. While he was busy with that, the good-with-details members of our group - Gail Williams-Martin, Susan Lange, Anne Clark and Denise Hanstad (on loan to us for the day) were busy in the living room painting it a new color, tidying up a bit and washing windows. Outside the house the total yard makeover was in full swing. Up on the roof were the not-afraid-of-anything people – Debbie Thulen, Benita Rozema and Dave Clark – scraping off clumps of moss and tree debris that had managed to cover the entire surface of the house and clog every inch of the gutters. In the front yard were the Martha Stewart’s of our group - Windy Hindman and Carol Annema, busy planting flowers in a flower bed and creating planting strips where none had been previously. Supplying our group with the latest in “cool boy toys” (I mean, “tools”) was Jason Rozema on the chainsaw with his willing-to-do-anything handy side-kick Terry Annema, removing what seemed like half a forest that surrounded the house. Tough guys Avery Hindman and Ian Lange were in the back of a very large farm dump truck as they helped stack up two full loads of yard waste and branches. On the ever-so-fashionable John Deere riding lawn mower was dear John Thulen (looking a lot like he’d done that before). Smiley faced John Hanstad (another loaner for the day) worked the pressure washer (with a grin, no less) that cleaned up the house, deck and sidewalk. Buffed-out Ahmik Hindman came with a load of soil and unloaded it in the planting beds before the beauty bark was put down. And I spent most of the day wresting a nasty patch of blackberry bushes (a task similar to getting a comb through my hair). Even cutey boys D.J. Clark and Carter Annema helped haul things to the dump truck when they weren’t busy catching snakes, picking up snails or petting the local puppy dog’s tail.
What amazed me the most was how much we all got done in a matter of six hours. When one person was done with one job, they looked around and grabbed a rake and started cleaning up, or helped someone else with another task. There were no slackers. There was no chit-chat. We were putting our hands and hearts to work to show this woman the love of Christ in a way I have never experienced before. The house came alive and had Jesus’ love shining through. At the end of the day a neighbor walking his dog yelled out at the homeowner, “Is this what a miracle looks like?” And she responded, “Yes, it’s a miracle!” Indeed it was - one that we were all so very happy to experience together. And then we all went back to the Thulens for a Bar-B-Que (including the home owner and her daughter).
It gave the term “Home Fellowship” a whole new meaning.
On Saturday, April 26th, we set aside the entire day to bless this woman that none of us knew (her daughter was good friends with Debbie Thulen’s niece). God gave us a wonderfully sunny day to carry out our task. Besides massive yard word, the list of tasks involved repairing some door hinges, minor plumbing repairs and replacing wood damaged by a leak. My ever-so-handy husband, Kory Slaatthaug, took care of the inside jobs. While he was busy with that, the good-with-details members of our group - Gail Williams-Martin, Susan Lange, Anne Clark and Denise Hanstad (on loan to us for the day) were busy in the living room painting it a new color, tidying up a bit and washing windows. Outside the house the total yard makeover was in full swing. Up on the roof were the not-afraid-of-anything people – Debbie Thulen, Benita Rozema and Dave Clark – scraping off clumps of moss and tree debris that had managed to cover the entire surface of the house and clog every inch of the gutters. In the front yard were the Martha Stewart’s of our group - Windy Hindman and Carol Annema, busy planting flowers in a flower bed and creating planting strips where none had been previously. Supplying our group with the latest in “cool boy toys” (I mean, “tools”) was Jason Rozema on the chainsaw with his willing-to-do-anything handy side-kick Terry Annema, removing what seemed like half a forest that surrounded the house. Tough guys Avery Hindman and Ian Lange were in the back of a very large farm dump truck as they helped stack up two full loads of yard waste and branches. On the ever-so-fashionable John Deere riding lawn mower was dear John Thulen (looking a lot like he’d done that before). Smiley faced John Hanstad (another loaner for the day) worked the pressure washer (with a grin, no less) that cleaned up the house, deck and sidewalk. Buffed-out Ahmik Hindman came with a load of soil and unloaded it in the planting beds before the beauty bark was put down. And I spent most of the day wresting a nasty patch of blackberry bushes (a task similar to getting a comb through my hair). Even cutey boys D.J. Clark and Carter Annema helped haul things to the dump truck when they weren’t busy catching snakes, picking up snails or petting the local puppy dog’s tail.
What amazed me the most was how much we all got done in a matter of six hours. When one person was done with one job, they looked around and grabbed a rake and started cleaning up, or helped someone else with another task. There were no slackers. There was no chit-chat. We were putting our hands and hearts to work to show this woman the love of Christ in a way I have never experienced before. The house came alive and had Jesus’ love shining through. At the end of the day a neighbor walking his dog yelled out at the homeowner, “Is this what a miracle looks like?” And she responded, “Yes, it’s a miracle!” Indeed it was - one that we were all so very happy to experience together. And then we all went back to the Thulens for a Bar-B-Que (including the home owner and her daughter).
It gave the term “Home Fellowship” a whole new meaning.
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