Making Family Memories as Overnight Family Promise Host by Lacy Ngo

 

My 5 year old, 2 year old, husband, and I just finished spending the night at St. John’s as the overnight host of our Family Promise guest. This was one of the highlights of our summer, and we have had an eventful summer. Our experience of staying overnight at the church was even more special than eating dinner with Cinderella and Prince Charming at Disney World! When the evening began, we loaded up our car with our luggage, some fun books, and family games, and headed over the church.  As soon as we walked into the building, a friendly young boy greeted Hilt, my son, and asked Hilt if he wanted to play cars with him. They were friends in an instant. When dinner began, the same little boy asked if Hilt could sit with him. Later, this young man noticed that I did not have a chair, and without a word, he walked to the other side of the room to get me a chair. I was amazed at how thoughtful this little 7 or 8-year-old boy was. He not only, generously shared his toys with Hilt, but was observant to the fact that I did not have a chair. It was an honor and joy to spend time with such thoughtful and kind hearted people. After dinner, our guest headed off to get ready for bed, and my little family headed to the lobby to play some of the family games we had packed. We snacked and played our games together. Then, we headed to our room. The fun didn’t end there. We pushed our air matrices together and read books before dosing off to sleep. Our room was comfy and came with a TV and DVD player. We noted that next time we would bring a DVD along with our games. The next morning we packed up our things and headed to Hardees for a special breakfast treat. All of us made such fun memories as a family that night, and we are ready to volunteer for our next overnight stay at our church.

A Lesson From Crosswalk Sunday School Class (Paraphrase from James Williamson)

Sometimes our children go through pain, and as parents, we want to keep them from it.  But then I think back on some of my hard times and how much I have grown from it.  I sometimes even realize later that I am glad I went through the hard time, because I see how God used it.  I think, God as our parent, may feel the same way.  He doesn’t like when we go through pain, but he knows sometimes it will help us.

A Quote from Lauren Reinhardt

“No one can be super mom, super man, super dad, super anything until we recognize that our power to do anything first comes from our relationship with Christ who strengthens us….In all our going and doing, we get distracted from God unless we sit down with God first…I challenge all of us to seek Him daily throughout he word…This is a lifestyle choice that is going to mean saying no to some things, so that we can say yes to better things.  When we work intentionally at keeping Him the center of our lives, we really do become kinder; we can love better, and in the end that is really what we are called to do.” Lauren Reinhardt