Celebrating 50 | Joyful & Triumphant

Celeb #10 of 50 – Unexpected Gift

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Treva Boericke

This past Sunday I stopped by to visit my mom who lives in an assisted living facility. Before walking out of the house, I had grabbed an apple and a tangelo. I started munching on the apple while driving there, but I intended to offer the tangelo to my mom. However, as I was walking up to the entrance, a couple ladies were sitting outside enjoying the fresh air. One of them commented how delicious the tangelo looked. So I stretched out my hand offering it to her. I caught her by surprise and she was hesitant to take it. After insisting a few times, she consented and said that she would enjoy eating it a bit later. Hope the surprise unexpected gift of a simple tangelo made her feel a little bit special for at least one day! I’ll just take mom a tangelo on my next visit. 🙂

Celeb #9 of 50 ~ Feeding Children

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Treva Boericke

Yesterday we had the privilege of volunteering at a local church who was hosting an organization called Feed My Starving Children. We enjoyed having another home school family join us in this venture. We worked together to form an assembly line to pour 4 ingredients through a funnel into a bag which was then weighed, sealed, and boxed, ready for shipment. Our little home school group completed about 9 boxes containing 36 bags in each, totaling 324 meals (each bag was designated to feed up to 6 people). For the 2 hour shift we were there, we packed enough boxes to feed 85 people for an entire year. We were instructed to cheer loudly everytime our group filled a complete box. The little cheer we yelled: Keepin’ ’em alive at table 5! The cheer indicated to a “runner” that we had a box to pick up from our table. It was a lot of fun!

Our home school work crew modeling our fashionable hairnets!

Beginning of the assembly line.

Full assembly line. What a great crew!

Celeb #8 of 50 ~ Roadside Cleanup

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Treva Boericke

Goal: help to beautify the roadside by ridding it of trash. We were hoping to cover at least a half-mile down the road – both sides of the road – but 45 minutes later we had 3 large bags filled way before we hit that half-mile mark. Guess we have more clean up to do to complete the task. We’ll keep chipping away at it 1 bag at a time. Thank you’s go to my hubby & daughter for their willingness to contribute to this project. We were grateful for the beautiful sunny day even tho there was still water in the ditches. Be careful if you join by cleaning up the roadside in your neighborhood. Be sure to check for ticks when you are finished! We found 2 on us. See The Frugal Berry – Solutions for Ticks for more information on how to deal with ticks (this is from our personal experience and research).

5/13/13 UPDATE: We continued to take a trash bag with us each day on our 1 mile walk and many full bags later, we finally completed this task. However, a day or two later, we continued to find “new” trash along the road. Guess I should try to do a quick clean up every week.

Celeb #7 of 50 ~ Food Pantry Shopping

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Treva Boericke

About a month ago we were asked if we could food shop one time each month for our church food pantry. We gladly accepted this challenge and privilege. Of course, I had to document our first experience with a few pictures. It was a challenge to see if we could purchase everything on the list and fit it all into 2 overflowing cartloads, then into our car – all in one trip. We made it! We also worked out our muscles of bit that day lifting those cases of food . . . from the store shelves into the cart, from the cart into the car, then from the car onto a cart to transport them into pantry, then stocking the shelves of the pantry. We look forward to ministering in this small way every month.

2 overflowing carts of food

1 overflowing car

stocking the shelves

Celeb #6 of 50 ~ Sharing Warmth

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Treva Boericke

The past couple months, my daughter and I have been spending some time sewing fabric blocks together. Since my sister is president of their church sewing circle, we were able to obtain the blocks already cut. My daughter had the privilege of “designing” the blanket by coming up with the pattern / layout. At the next scheduled sewing, they will have this ready to knot and finish. The blanket will then be sent to share with someone in need. It was fun to spend some time sewing again ~ something of which I have not done much in years. Praying this blanket will not only warm the heart and body of the recipient, but it can also warm their soul.

5/7/13 UPDATE: Last week we were able to help finish the blanket by knotting the corners of each square. Then my sister finished sewing the trim along the outside edges. It is now ready to give away.