The Rudolphs: Lucas's Service Project

A couple of months ago, Andy and I noticed the boys were whispering a lot and hiding something from us. We realized that Lucas was "stealing" money from Andy's change bowl. He was plotting with Adam for one of them to distract us, while the other one would go and sneak a few coins. When we confronted Lucas about it he said he was "taking it for the poor." So with that in mind, we explained that if he wanted money he needed to ask and we would decide if he was worthy at that moment, but in the mean time, the money he had taken and the money that he would "earn" in the coming weeks would go to the poor, just as he intended.

So throughout Lent and a few weeks after, he would ask for money occasionally and if he was behaving appropriately, we would give him some coins for the poor. Around Easter, I told him he needed to decide what kind of poor people he wanted to help. I explained that there were homeless people, hungry adults and children, sick children, etc. He said he wanted to help the homeless. "Mom, I want to give this money to those people Dad is building the house for, since they don't have one to live in". I then went on to explain that Daddy's clients had the money to pay Daddy for the house that he is building, so they weren't exactly the homeless I was talking about.

Lucas decided he wanted to help hungry children and grown ups. So I looked for some good learning oppurtunities for him to donate his money that worked with our schedule and a very worthy cause presented itself.

The United Way of Southwestern Indiana said the most common request on it's 211 help line in 2012 were requests for food. Some 20,000 people in Southern Indiana do not have enough food and I recently learned that school social workers are sending food home in backpacks for children to eat over the weekend when they are not at school to be fed. I'm not sure I have all the numbers exact, but either way I was very surprised. My employer, Keller Schroeder, is participating in an upcoming food drive sponsored by the United Way and we set a goal to fill 200 bag of groceries to donate.

Lucas took his $4.50 and went grocery shopping. He and Adam helped me pick out food they thought kids would like. We got some items kids can cook themselves as well as the bases for some family meals. His $4.50 clearly didn't cover it, but he handed the cashier his money and he believes he paid for it all. (We will teach him the lesson on how far a dollar goes another time.) We went home and sorted our groceries for the poor. Lucas helped me fill our grocery bags and we talked about how this food would help. We talked about how his belly feels when he is hungry and how it is harder for him concentrate and be a nice boy when he is hungry. I asked him to imagine what it would be like if Mommy had to tell him she didn't have any food for him to eat. I think he got it and he was very proud of his bags of groceries. I'm sure many more of these teaching opportunities will present themselves, but for now I think his first service project was a success.