Updates
“A Blessing to Others”
At ACH we are so thankful to have a community that supports our mission of “Restoring the identity of kids so they can realize their great value and be a blessing to others”. We are thankful for your support because it’s hard to accomplish our mission by merely talking to our kids. You are an example of taking an active step to meet the needs of others. This week we are taking an active step to make the words of our mission an action. We call this “mission week”. We will be working along side our kids to be a “blessing to others”. It is time well spent showing kids they have something to offer others through service. Thank you for supporting our campus to impact our local community…..
The following is a communication from our Director of Operations. His role is to oversee the adult impact on the lives of the kids that are in our care… Listen to his heart as he thinks about the upcoming week…
Darrin Murphy
President, Amarillo Children’s Home
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3.7 miles away from a challenge
3.7 miles away from a different life
3.7 miles away from opportunity
3.7 miles to make a difference.
We’re heading into Mission Week!
Tuesday through Thursday of mission week we’ll gather our bleary-eyed, summer-worn kiddos into our auditorium for a quick breakfast and to make lunches for the day. Then, after loading supplies, our once-sleepy now how-can-you-have-so-much-energy crew will pile into the vans and head 3.7 miles northwest to the San Jacinto neighborhood.
It’s here that our vision and those of Square Mile Community Development and ACT Community Outreach will meet to serve each other and benefit the surrounding community. We will do everything from tearing down fences to building planting beds, housekeeping to gardening. We’ll likely encounter some blisters, plenty of sweat and possibly a tear or two, but all these things are part of the process of learning to live and give beyond ourselves.
Mission Week is a success when our kids are exposed to challenging work and see they are not only capable of doing such tasks, but those efforts make other people’s lives better. They earn the satisfaction of a job well done and the good feeling of having helped someone else. They discover they don’t have to conform to society’s views of their age or station, but they can make a significant positive impact in the world around them, right now. It’s in giving and doing for others that our lives and our hearts become full, and in the overflow of Mission Week, our kids start looking in their day to day lives for opportunities to impact others and be a blessing.
A successful Mission Week is a beautiful thing, but it only comes when we put our kids in settings where they discover they have the ability to make a difference in other people’s lives – and it’s because of you that we are able to put them in these situations. Your gifts make it possible for kids not to just hear about how they can be a blessing to others, but to actually be a blessing to others.
This short drive of 3.7 miles is a long journey of the heart – one in which we get to experience the joy in giving, the joy in sweating, the joy in working alongside friends and this crazy, big family called ACH, and the power of being a blessing to others.
Thank you for your heart for kids and for our community!
John Emmitt
Director of Operations, Amarillo Children’s Home
