November Raking Bus Launch

Another year of the raking bus has come and gone and just like previous years, this one's was also a success. A crazy idea has now become a fun tradition.

Here are some quick stats:
- bagged 228 bags of leaves
- 7 houses
- we teamed up with another local church and their youth pastor, but none of her kids came
- one house didn't want them bagged and we thought it would be okay to bag them anyway...But then she wanted us to get rid of the bags too...So we had to load about 50 bags into the church van and an SUB and take those down the street to aforementioned youth pastor's house/parsonage - "The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B." - James Yorke
- 1 school bus, lots of rakes
- D made a chili dip, bought some drinks and had the kids over at our house for a lunch break. Our girls also came with me during the afternoon.
- a lightweight worship set at the very end.
- cut up two strands of Christmas star lights to give one to each student at the end - idea of light of the world and what impact we make when we are all strung together, like on a school bus (and the idea that these kids can serve and bless others themselves)

There is this family we raked today, and they have done a tremendous amount for the student ministry at GCC. Both of their kids came through it and the younger one now serves as a small group leader. The mom is now going through her second round of cancer (a second type in 5 or 6 years.) The most poignant image for me all day was Mrs. G sitting in a chair in her doorway, with her crutches next to her, watching us the whole time we were raking, with an absolute look of joy on her face.

There are a few more images at my flickr tag SPACE200511Launch .

And to those of you that came out for another SPACE Launch, thank you for serving and impacting our community. YOU shine. And there is no putting you under a bowl.

Click on the image below to see some video clips from the day.