My Generation

This evening, the youth participated in a pre-service project. This Saturday is the North American Southeast Area Day of Service, a day set aside for all of the LDS church units in the southeast to provide service to their communities. Our ward is working with the Greater Birmingham Ministries to hand out food and clothing to those in need as part of that project. This particular project was arranged weeks ago, but is so very timely in light of the devastation that impacted our area yesterday. The youth were supposed to sort out the clothing yesterday in preparation for Saturday, but the weather moved the activity to this evening instead.

While I am grateful that we were blessed to have been outside of the path of destruction, and I am deeply saddened by the loss all around the area, this post is not about the weather or providing service.

I had to drag the three littles along to take Kit to the place where the youth were meeting to carpool downtown. Putting all three in a car together at the same time is never good. Even more so today since they had been at home all day because the elementary school was still without power. When we got to the meeting spot, we had to wait a few minutes for everyone to show up and rides to be arranged. All three of the littles somehow ended up fighting in the front seat as soon as Kit got out. I managed to get two of them into the back, and the third (Kyle won the front) sticks his head out of the window and calls out, "Is everything okay so we can go now??" Brother Phillips, who is in charge of the service project, comes over to talk with Kyle. "Does your mom have a great dinner waiting for you at home? Is that why you're so anxious to get home?" Kyle responds, "No. A Wii." He had been suffering from electronic withdrawal since lunchtime. Brother Phillips didn't hear him and looked confused. Kyle tried again. "I got a Wii." Brother Phillips looked concerned. Trying to be helpful, he pointed out that there was a restaurant right next door. We managed to wait until he walked away from the car before we laughed. And laughed. And laughed. It felt good.