e-mail
Our church had its annual youth fundraiser this week. The youth sells pizzas (homemade) then a bunch of us volunteer and we crank out over 1300 pizzas in one day. It is an assembly line process, and one we have used for years.
This was Hannah’s first time helping with this, and she did a great job. She was easily the youngest child there, but worked hard along with other kids and adults as well. This is a fun time, along with hard work. We laugh, work and help our church’s youth.
Things like this are great ways to help our kids. Hannah had an extreme amount of pride for what she did today. She is proud of herself for working hard, proud for working harder and faster than some of the big kids (she did) and proud that she helped our church. She deserves every bit of it and she received a great amount of praise from me.
So, what’s the big deal about making some pizzas? For our kids this is something new. Most likely in their early lives, they did not get to do things where they gave back to someone else. They were usually on the receiving end of services. That is not the case with all of our kids, but kids who come from abusive and neglectful homes do have these issues.
Hannah is well known in our church, partly because my husband and I are so active, but also because she is an outgoing and fun loving child, and she’s dang cute. A few of the “older” kids that were helping are kids that I taught in Sunday school when Hannah was here for respite. They were taken by here when she sat in our Sunday school room on the Sundays she was with us. Our church has been able to see her progress, and she basks in their attention.
Teaching children to give back to their community is great for building self-esteem, as well as helping to build good morals and character.
I was proud of my little girl, but more importantly, she was proud of herself.
