Service Learning Component Post

1. Who were we trying to serve?
           We specifically wanted to try and serve the children in the hospitals who would be there over the holidays. We wanted to give them some Christmas cheer, as well as their families.


2. How did we serve them?
            We served them by just being able to spread a little Christmas cheer through the cards that we made and through the notes of encouragement on them. As we pray over the cards, we want to pray that God would just pour out his love over the children and his joy over them as we give out the cards or even if the nurses give out the cards. Giving out Hershey Kisses and Candy Canes will really help to just bring out the joy and the smiles in kids as we fill them with candy haha! But, we are really hoping to give these out personally to the children and families so that they may see our passion and our love that we have to share with them. That we are able to spread the love of Jesus to them but if we are not able to, we will pray that God would just surround them with love and joy these holidays. We will also put invitations in to the Christmas services and hopefully be able to see some of the families there!


3. Where did you serve them? Is there a location, or a specific event, where your target population gathers or that is, for some reason, more effective for you in serving them than other locations?
              We made the cards and everything at the church but we are waiting to hear back from the Hanover or Gettysburg Hospitals to see if we can deliver the cards and they will pass them out or if we can deliver the cards and pass them out ourselves. The hospital will be the best place because that is where the people will be who we are ministering to with the cards and that is also where they will be over the holidays. We want to fill them with Jesus's hope and love in their hospital rooms!


4. When did you serve them? Was there a particular day or time that was better than others?
              Well we made the cards after class on Monday and we each made a certain amount but we want to deliver the cards closer to Christmas but before our break so that we are all there. As earlier in one of the answers, we are still waiting to hear from the hospital about delivering them so when they get back to us is when we will go and that should be this coming week!


Report on the Outreach:


            Unfortunately i can't really report too much on how the outreach went because we have not been able to proceed with that yet because of waiting on the hospitals. We are all really looking forward to it though and i personally am really looking forward to just being able to sow a seed into the person that i get to meet and bless with some smiles and some love. I want to shine the light of Jesus upon them and i pray that they would be able to see Jesus in me and to invite their family to church at our Christmas Services that they would be able to even hear about Jesus there! When the girls and i sat down to make these cards it was just plain fun for us to do but as we did them we were just really hoping and praying that Jesus would use these cards to put a joy in their hearts.


Three Things that were executed well:


1. The Act of Service: I think as we tried to figure out what to do for this project, coming across the cards idea really is a great idea because it's a way to bless people but not only bless them, bring a hope and joy to them and a peace to them through the holidays. I think sometimes i don't really think about how important or meaningful a card could really be to somebody.
2. The Cards: As the girls and i got ready to make the cards, Bonnie and i brought the supplies and i think we all had the most fun with the glitter pens..haha. :) We did quite enjoy using those! But, just the fact that whether the cards looked professional or not, it means more to someone when it's something that you make yourself, something that you took the time to make for someone that you don't even know, just so that you could put a smile and a hope in someone for the holidays, but not just for the holidays, that it could be life-changing for someone!
3. The time spent together making the cards: It's been quite awhile since the four of us girls have just been able to sit down together and just have fun. It was a struggle for us girls to come up with an outreach to do. We actually had one or two ideas that had just totally fell through and once we finally got this idea and were able to set aside some time to work on it, it went so well! We were just able to sit down together and just spend some time together as we worked. We really had some good positive time together and even laughed a little bit. :)


Three Things that could be Improved:
1. Timing: Our timing wasn't the greatest with really trying to sit down and plan out something to do. All of us really struggled with it and every time we did try, it just ended up getting pushed off to where we only had two weeks left. Starting earlier next time would be good!
2. Giving out jobs in more of a specific manner: We didn't really hand out jobs to each other. We really relied more on one person and we should have all been working harder on it and really trying to plan more but we didn't. When you hand out jobs, it doesn't put as much pressure on one person like it did and it made it frustrating too i think for all of us. So being able to hand out jobs to each person is definitely something that could have been better!
3. Better communication with the event that is taking place: We definitely have been having some trouble getting a hold of the hospital/service center. I think if we would have started earlier it would have been easier but the hospitals are not getting back to us so we are really hoping and praying that things will work out because when you just expect something to happen like that it doesn't always work out but we are believing that things will work out for what we need!