Kidsserve-cedar run

As the shortest month of the year is quickly disappearing right in front of our eyes, I would like to recapture what we did a couple of weeks ago here at KidsServe. The theme of the month was "Giving without showing off" As someone who is in the position to teach children how to serve, it is my desire and prayer that the children will grow up serving with the right motives.  I hope the little skit I put together (please ask your kiddos) demonstrated how foolish it is to help someone out driven by the desire only to make him/herself look better, as the Bible says: Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your lef...

I don't know about you, but birthdays can be a touchy subject for me. Especially when it comes to my own birthday. This may stem from the fact that I have a couple of traumatic (?) memories associated with my birthdays, like that one time in college when only 1 of my close friends could make it to my birthday dinner, as the rest had to cancel in the last minute... Then again, at least I had a friend who I got to celebrate with. What if my birthday comes and no one even knows about it, and I simply cannot afford to celebrate on my own? Unfortunately, I think it is safe to assume that this "what if" scenario is a reality for so many people, even in our own region. According to a recent survey, on Ja nuary 28, 2016 there were 1,059 people who were homeless in the Fairfax-Falls Church community. Children under the age of 18 account for 32 percent (341 persons) who were homeless. We shared this statistics with the children and had to inform them that homelessness or food...

Greetings KidsServe family! I wanted to recap the wonderful evening we had at the Chantilly Crossings Senior care center a couple of weeks ago! Our mission was to bless the residents of this facility with beautiful Christmas music. We gathered in the movie room to practice and to make sure we had our elf hats on.. We also shared with the children this month's Bible verse: "Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others,  as faithful  stewards of God’s grace in its various forms." 1 Peter 4:10  NIV> Then we got to work with our jingle bells on! The pictures don't show it, but the residents all had big smile on their faces and they seemed genuinely amused and touched by the beautiful voices of our students (and the parents too!). What a great ending to our 2017 KidsServe meeting we had! Renee and I look forward to serving with you all again next month. Merry Christmas! Risa & Renee

For those who were at the Sunday service at church on 11/12, you must have noticed in the lobby the cookies, brownies, chocolate covered pretzel rods and "snowman soup" among other goodies. Well, this is a blog post on how the sweetness unfolded before our eyes.. Rewinding back to Tuesday, Nov 7, we had our monthly meeting and the topic of this month was natural disaster. With all the recent hurricanes that hit various parts of our country, we have sadly become accustomed to the human tragedies associated with the disasters. Unless we have directly been affected or know someone who have been, we are all in danger of leaving the memory behind and ceasing to care. Here at KidsServe, we want to teach our children to have a long lasting compassion, backed up by action. We watched a video created by Samaritan's Purse (christian organization).  We all learned together the level of disaster caused by the three major hurricanes that our nation experienced just this yea...

Welcome back to 2017-18 KidsServe! We are excited about this upcoming two semesters as we learn and grow together in Christ with your kiddos! Recently, we had our first meeting for this school year. There were many familiar faces and some new faces. It was such a delight to welcome all of you! To kick start our new year, we chose a topic that is very much relevant to service: appreciation. We discussed who we are thankful for, and how we can show our appreciation to them.  Many interesting and thoughtful answers there! We then pointed out how t he Bible instructs us to encourage one another often. Paul, in his multiple letters to the churches he was leading, always reminds his friends how thankful he is for them. Usually, following his words of thanks are words of encouragement to help build them up. Appreciation and giving go hand in hand. The Bible says,  “ Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. ”   1 Thessalonians...

My mom used to tell me how fast time flies once you become an adult. I never really related to that statement until I had kids. Honestly, right now, an year feels like just about how six months used to feel like before having kids. Perhaps I am too busy even noticing the passage of time or perhaps time really is shrinking right before my eyes!!! In any case, I typed all that to say that I cannot believe we just had our last meeting of the year. UNBELIEVABLE. What? we already had 7 KidsServe meetings this year?? We started our meeting by reflecting these past few months since October. Some of the favorite meetings the kids mentioned were the Christmas visit to the senior care living home, drawing pictures for others, etc. Someone mentioned her favorite was going to the fire station, although we had to remind her that was from last year. Good input though, we'll make a mental note of that. We reflected how we served our church with cleaning, overseas kids with Chris...

Have you ever experienced hunger on a daily basis? I don't mean that little hunger pang you feel right before meal time. I mean real hunger that robs you of energy, stamina and joy from your life. I am fortunate enough not to have that kind of experience, but I got a really good idea what it must be like from a documentary called "Living on One Dollar". It's an interesting story about a few brave American college students living in rural Guatemala with only $1 a day for two months. Highly recommend it! I wish we could have shown our kids the same documentary, but it admittedly is not a suitable kind for young children to watch, so instead we opted to teach our students about hunger issue through a video clip and a series of true or false questions. **disclaimer.. the kids are sitting close from the screen because our speaker system was not working and they needed to be close from the laptop...** We then demonstrated the world's unbala...