Love Thy Neighbor . . .

Love Thy Neighbor . . . .

This week has been about loving thy neighbor. It is Mission Vernon. Now you might be thinking, “The Bible says go into all the world”. . . . But is not the second greatest command “love your neighbor as yourself”? This is what we are trying to accomplish with this mission. We want our young people to grow up to all be missionaries in whatever country, state, or city they live in. We want them to love mission work not just mission trips.
I work with the youth of our church. It has been a wonderful experience teaching, encouraging, and loving those children. I feel I have been called to work with that ministry. I enjoy being apart of their lives. It is very rewarding. (Rewards are not the goal but are nice when you see the results of the work you have put in.)
My reward came this week. The youth are taking care of yards around Vernon. They are mowing the grass, trimming hedges, and carrying off trees and limbs. I have been unable to be apart of the daily work crews. I arrived home yesterday afternoon and noticed that my grass had been mowed. This is no big deal because I have a guy that mows it and I often come home to freshly cut grass. It was not until I had pulled into my backyard and noticed a dead tree was missing. I then noticed other trees had been trimmed up and the hedges had been cut back. That was when I realized that the mission crew had been to my house.
I know I am blessed by God to have the association of those kids. And love by the WSCC youth group. I know that I have made an impact in their lives (and the lives of the adults with them) because the crew came to the house and did work for me when in reality they had others places they could have been working and other things they could have been doing. My heart has been touched by this.
This mission has not gone unnoticed by the community either. This mission crew made the difference to another woman yesterday. The crew went to mow the yard of a house that was abandoned. The house next door was grown up as well. The woman in that house came out and asked them to mow hers as well. It seems her husband died in April and she had just enough money to have the yard done that month and the month of May. But she has been unable to save enough money to pay to have it mowed again. She offered to pay the youths for their time. They mowed her grass for free. I was told she had tears in her eyes from their kindness.
Love is the universal language. God does not want it any other way. For me, their show of love for me was sweeter because 1) it came from their hearts but mostly because 2) they were blessed by God with this loving desire to serve.
. . . And I am sure they will never know just how much their work meant to me, because I don't think I can find the right words to describe how I felt when I saw that tree gone and those hedges trimmed.