30 Hour Famine

I spent the weekend with some of the most incredible young people that I have ever had the pleasure of working with. We participated in World Vision's 30 hour famine starting at 7am on Friday morning. The youth made t-shirts the week before at youth group to wear to school on Friday to help explain why they weren't eating. After school we met at the church to spend the rest of our fasting time together. Our first activity was a service project at Hillcrest Ministries. Half the group went to the Hillcrest buildings and did some painting while the other half went to the Hillcrest Thriftstore to volunteer.

We spent the evening doing activities related to world hunger including creating a visual demonstration for the congregation of how many children die each day from malnutrition. They put 2800 handprints on long sheets of paper to hang around the sanctuary. Each finger represents a child - 14,000 in all!

We spent the night at Mercury Gymnastics where we played on the trampolines and the foam pit and then rope swings. Everyone was ready to crash about 1:30 so we called it a night. Morning came early at 7:30am and we headed back to the church to finish our project and find out the final total of moneys raised. Jennifer and I had challenged the youth that if they raised $1000, they could pick out an outfit for us to wear from the thriftstore and if they raised $2500, they could dye our hair the color of their choice. I really never thought they would pull it off since they really had so little time following Christmas but I will never underestimate the youth again!!

They raised $2573.50!! For me they chose Huckleberry Blue and Party Time Pink and for Jennifer they chose turquoise and red. I had a fabulous team of hair artists - Amanda, Jen & Ashlei - who assured me that they knew what they were doing. They had even created a diagram of which hairs would be which color. I was starting to get nervous!

However, it was unnecessary. They did an excellent job! They seperated my hair straight across the middle and did the lower half in the blue and the upper half in the pink. Thanks to the fact that I have highlighted my hair for almost as many years as I have been alive, the color took well to my hair. Unfortunately, Jennifer did not have the same luck. Her hair is darker and she has never lightened it so all you can see is a hint of red in some places. Darn the luck!

Sunday morning Jennifer and I arrived completely donned in the lovely outfits that the youth picked out at the thrift store. I had a lovely pink dress with a leopard print skirt underneath, pink slippers, a colorful jacket, frilly gloves, a tropical purse, a hat and a belt around the hat. Jennifer had a bright-colored skirt, a lovely green top, a matching hat with wide brim, pink heels and a beautiful yellow robe. Where did our youth get their fashion sense!

We got a lot of comments on our beautiful outfits but I was so proud of our youth group that I didn't even care! They did a fantastic job and really worked together to accomplish something that they never would have been able to do alone.

I was also so proud of them that I didn't even mind having pink and blue hair! It may be with me for a very long time but I don't care! We had a fabulous weekend fasting together and we raised enough money to feed and care for seven children for a year. Thinking about that makes the color of my hair seem pretty unimportant.