A Grand Plan for our 30 Days of Thankfulness Drive! Will you join us?

*Just WOW! Y’all are incredible! Please note the update at the bottom of the post, and THANK YOU!*

Welcome to our annual 30 Days of Thankfulness Drive. If you’ve participated in the past you know our goal is to come together as a community to live out our gratitude as we head into the holidays, instead of merely expressing it with memes and quotes.

For close to two decades you, my dear friends, have reached out to the less fortunate with me by raising money for worthy projects here in our country and beyond. Together, we’ve dug a water well that continues to supply life sustaining water to an entire village. We’ve helped build an orphanage with my daughter’s non profit, and we’ve worked to see children enjoy the life-changing benefits of sponsorship through Compassion International. Yes, YOU, have done all of that, whether your gift was large or small. In preparation for this year’s announcement, I found this quote we used several years back:

Thirty days of thankfulness. It’s not a long time, but it’s a perfect time to join hands and do something grand, together. ~Shellie Rushing Tomlinson

I can’t imagine a better segue into this year’s drive! You saw that grand word, right?

I was praying about what our drive should look like this year when I learned my grand girls had become intrigued by a particular mission work and were planning their own fundraiser to support it.

 

They told their mother, “Keggie might even tell her readers about it!” Meanwhile, I’d been asking the Lord to direct me towards a group or organization I could partner with this year who were answering their own God-given dream, so I could help them reach their own goals. It never crossed my mind it’d be my own grands! How amazing is God? 

 

SHOP THE GRANDS TEA TOWELS

 

 

What I learned about the girls’ passion captured this Bible loving grandma’s heart and I’m thrilled to bring it to you!

The girls have recently become interested in Bible translation. They were amazed to learn there are more than 2000 people groups around the globe today who still don’t have access to the Bible in their own indigenous language. When Emerson and Carlisle decided they had to help, their mother helped them brainstorm the idea of making and selling tea towels. (They’ve been taking lessons from a brilliant seamstress and family friend, Mrs. Jo Edmondson. Thanks, Jo!)

 

 

Whether we sell a thousand tea towels, or two, the focus of this year’s living giving drive feels holy and right. In another glorious detail, the Grand Boys of Texas want to help their cousins Emerson and Carlisle by selling the girls’ tea towels in their area.

 

 

Be still my Grandma heart. Allow me to connect this drive with that glorious Word of God before I go.

Days before this shaped up I’d become taken afresh with the story of the widow’s mite, only from a different angle.

As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” Luke 21: 1-4

I’ve always heard this story taught in the context of the heart behind a gift being more important than the gift itself. I still believe that, but I’m currently taken by the widow’s simple trust that her “little” was important enough to put in the basket. This is what I see in the girls’ goal.