Service Projects
Serving as a family makes for some great talk time and gives everyone a shared experience that you can build on. There are countless ways to serve both in your community and around the world for a variety of causes that are close to God's heart from helping the poor to caring for the orphan and the widow.
Local opportunities to serve:- Volunteer together at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen.
- Visit a senior citizen home and spend time with the folks who don't get many visitors.
- Rake leaves, shovel driveways or do yard work for widows or shut-ins who cannot do it themselves.
- Organize a car wash to benefit a specific ministry or your church.
- Have a service scavenger hunt where you have to do random service work for people in your community (rake, shovel, clean, etc).
- Sponsor a child from another country and communicate with him or her on a regular basis.
- Help foster families in your community by spending time with the foster kids and giving the foster parents a break. You can also volunteer your time to help at their homes with regular stuff like homework or work projects.
- Gather stuffed animals, coats, blankets, toys or anything else that you can donate to families in need. This can be a great way to involve friends, teachers and other acquaintances who can donate these materials.
- Check with your church and plug into the many events they may be already doing as outreach events.
- The James Fund, a Family Christian Stores Foundation, was started with the James 1:27 mandate in mind..."religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress..." There are many ways you can get involved in the cause of the widow and the orphan. You can raise money for the James Fund or other adoption ministries. You can "adopt" a local widow into your family and spend time with her. You can help mentor a child in foster care.
- Good Goers plans mission/adventures trips all over the world that do work on behalf of orphans and widows. Experience hands on work as a family and have the time of your life! Good Goers plans, organizes and leads the trips so all you need to do is sign up. Visit GoodGoers.com for all the details.
- Feed My Starving Children is the ministry covered on the video that packages food to be sent to third world countries.
- World Vision is the largest Christian worldwide relief organization. They have projects where you can get involved all over the country as well.