August 7 – “Fire Station One and the Back to School Bash”

I spent a good deal of time over the last few days paring down a list of churches.  Nathan and his cohorts at Fire Station One are organizing a Back to School Bash for the kids in the district that they serve.  The idea is to provide as many school supplies as they can for the kids right before they head off to school (the kids, not the fire fighters).  They are also cooking up some hot dogs and letting the kids crawl on the fire trucks.  Sounds like great fun.  Oh, and the kids might just enjoy it as well. 

So what about this list of churches?  The fire fighters asked if I wanted to be involved as chaplain, and of course I said sure.  That meant my job is to contact the churches in that district for two reasons.  One is simply to ask that the church inform its members about the event.  The other is to see if any of the church members would like to donate school supplies for the event.  They even came up with some cute information flyers.  The fire fighters would come by the church and pick them up, or the supplies could be dropped off at the station (It’s the one downtown at 2514 Sealy).  I put together a letter to the pastors, and today I’ll get it printed on some fire department letterhead to give it some “official” clout.  Then all that remains will be getting it and the flyers in the hands of the pastors. 

Which brings me to the list of churches.  Nathan emailed me a copy of it, and I was amazed at how many churches were on the list.  No less than 45 different churches of all denominations were represented.  My first task was to double-check addresses, and as I did that I noticed a few things.  Some of the addresses were not actually in the district area, which runs from about 16^th Street to 39^th Street.  At least one was not actually a working church any more.  That was St. Joseph’s.  It is now a venue for weddings owned by the Galveston Historical Society, I think.  Some of them I admit I have never heard of:  Spiritual True Church.  Isaac Thompson Church.  B and B Café (Yep.  Listed as a church.  I assume it is run by a church).  I tried to track down all of the churches on the internet so I could get an email address or better yet a pastor’s name.  That worked well for some of them, but others seem to have no web presence at all.  My idea is to send them a sort of heads up email, send the letter and flyers via the good old post office, and try to make as many personal visits as I can.  The thing is, there are only two Sundays left before the actual event, so they need to get this stuff before the weekend if possible. Sounds like today might be a long day.   

Psalms 103:13 says, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.”

Father, please inspire people to show some “Daddy compassion” toward the kids who need some help with school supplies.  Amen.