Our Blessing Adventure

Our family has had the pleasure of traveling with 5 other families every New Years for the last ten years. We have been to Broken Bow, Concan, Arkansas, the Hill Country, Brady, Lipan….. We basically pick an area we would like to go to and look for an Air BnB that will fit our massive group. This group has become family to us over the years. We don’t necessarily see all of them much throughout the year, but we know that these are our 2am friends. We could call any of these families at any given time and know they would show up. That in and of itself is a blessing to us. Our adventures usually include a hike somewhere, pickleball, lots of board games and LOTS & LOTS of food. We happen to have some pretty good cooks amongst us! This year we decided to mix it up a bit. This year we decided to pick a restaurant to go eat at with the intention of leaving a really big tip. I have heard of people doing this before, but it was usually just the people at the dinner that gave the tip. For example, I know a group of women that would do this every year. They would go with the intention of each of them leaving a hundred dollar tip to the server. I thought that was AWESOME! I definitely wouldn’t be upset if I was on the receiving end of that tab. 😉 This is where ours took a different turn, and if i am being honest, I was a little hesitant about it at first because it involved asking people for money. We (all five families) all created a separate family video and posted it on our social media platforms asking our friends and followers to Venmo us a donation to be added to this tip we wanted to give. I may step on some peoples toes here, so I apologize in advance, but I am NOT a big fundraising person, I can not stand Go fund Me, I am really turned off when people put their Cash App or Venmo link on their social media feeds in hopes that someone might give them money, especially on their birthdays. If someone wants to give you money, they will find you to do so. No need to guilt them into it. (Rant over). Back to the adventure. So, to say I was a little unsettled about it at first, would be true, BUT if everyone else is doing it…….LOL we jumped on board. No man left behind, right! Each video didn’t just ask our friends and family for money, but it invited them to be a part of the blessing. Scripture tells us in 1 Corinthians 2 that “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ……” It goes on to talk about the different parts of the body and how each have a specific purpose and then ends with, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each of you is a part of it.” We together form the body of Christ. We TOGETHER, can do way more than we can do on our own. So we hit post and headed out on a hike. In the videos we gave about a 6 hour time span to allow people to jump in and boy did they. In that 6 hour time span we had 123 people, some of those people being some of you, give to our crazy request. It was so cool! As we were on the hike, and cell coverage allowed, you would hear someone say, “We got another twenty dollars!”, “Someone just sent $10!” “I got another five.” No amount was to small, every donation mattered, just like us and the body of Christ. There is no part in this game of life that is to small. We all have a part to play. In those 6 hours those 123 people gave $3,400! Let me spell that out for you…. three thousand, four hundred dollars!! That’s a lot of money! Once we got back from our hike, we got ready and went to this little mom and pop restaurant in town and our little adventure began. Before we arrived at the restaurant a few of us had talked about what we would do if the service was terrible. LOL. Because let’s be honest, when you have bad service at a restaurant the last thing you want to do it leave a tip much less a really good one. (You should ALWAYS leave a tip, just my two cents😉). We agreed that bad service or not, this money would all go to our server. What better way to show the love of Christ than to be kind even when others do not reciprocate AND I gotta say when a party of 21 shows up out of no where, that can make or break a servers attitude. So, we arrived at the restaurant and let the hostess know that there were 21 of us that needed a table. She let us know that the wait was going to be about twenty minutes. As we waited we looked around the place wondering who our waiter would be that night. The anticipation and our hunger were growing by the minute. 🙂 Once we were seated our waiter, Dave, came over, introduced himself, took our drink orders, and quickly came back to deliver them. It was what seemed to me to be a normal night in the restaurant biz. He had several tables, but Dave was as cool as a cucumber and attentive to every request.

At the end of the evening, Dave brought us our checks and we paid it like we normally would have and included our usual tip (he had even told us that on parties of 6 or more gratuaities were already added.) After the check was settled we asked Dave to come over to our table. We began by letting him know that we had come there that night specifically to bless our server. At the moment you could tell his interest was peaked, but I am sure in his mind it was, “yeah yeah….come on I am trying to get out of here.” We told him about our group, told him about our faith, asked him about his and then finished out by telling him why we were doing what we were doing and then presented him with the total that those 123 people gave, $3400.

At that point he was blown away, he was definitely more engaged and he shared with us that he had been the ONLY server that showed up that night. He had all the tables and yet, still made a point to show up at each of them as if they were his only table. He could have complained about the other servers. He could have rushed around trying to fill every order without being where his feet were, but he didn’t. He engaged with all of us. He listened and he showed up, even when he was the only one tending to the tables, he showed up with kindness. Dave shared with us that he had been working hard to raise money to go see his mom who lives in Washington. She is on hospice and he wanted to go spend time with her. This money would give him the opportunity to make that trip.

That night we had the opportunity to be a blessing to someone we didn’t know, someone we may never see again. If you gave, YOU were a huge part of that. I truly believe that in life we are blessed to be a blessing. It doesn’t always have to be a financial blessing. It can be a smile or kind word. It can be a meal delivered in a difficult time, a quick text or maybe just your presence in a time of grief. If we have a roof over our head and breath in our lungs we are blessed. Bless others with what you have. The book of Acts is absolutely one of my all time favorite books of the Bible. In it you find people giving what they have to help others. It’s the village mentality. I am not sure that’s actually a term, but if not it is now. A village mentality is what I saw when I visited Nicaragua. Kids running around the village and being fed by someone else’s mama. People looked after each other and loved on one another without even second guessing it. I believe we miss the mark a lot here in America. Instead of village mentality we have a lot of the me mentality. We have to do better.

When we decided to go on the blessing adventure, we did it because we ARE aware of how blessed we are. The fact that we get to travel with framily (my word for friends that are family) every year is so special to us. We know we are blessed to have friendships that point each other back to Jesus. Every year, for the past 10, we have shown up and ate ALOT, played lots of games and came back completely refreshed. This year by mixing it up, we were reminded that people are dealing with things in life that most will never know. That collectively, a group of people can make a big difference towards an unknown cause (remember one body, many parts). I am so grateful to have friends that point me back to Jesus, but also shower others with the love of Christ.

This year, find ways to be a blessing. Blessing adventures can be small random acts of kindness or crazy insane tips to people you don’t know. Whatever it is….invite someone else along for a ride and see lives be transformed. Your life, the person you invite and the one you surprise by your kindness. You may be the only Jesus they see! (just a reminder, you were created in the image of God, so make it count!)