Mood:  lyrical

Every once in a while, I will talk about something going on with our ministry here at Good News Mission. Sarah tries to write a prayer letter at least every other month, and I always link to them, but I know it is hard to remember to click on the link, and, besides, she can only go into so much detail in her letters. That's why I try to mention ministry happenings from time to time, and am going to endeaver to highlight a particular aspect of our ministry more often.

As most of you know, we work with the low income folks in the small town that we live in. In fact, Good News Mission, and the attached house that we live in, is located right across the street from the housing projects. Now, these projects are nothing like the projects in big cities. Although there are drugs and alcoholism, there are no gangs or violence. In the eight and a half years that we have lived here, there has not been any major incident that we can speak of. But, the people are impoverished both financially and spiritually, and need the Lord. Our main goal is to always give them the Gospel, and teach them how to grow spiritually, but we also strive to help them lead better lives through money management help, cooking classes, tutoring etc.

One of the new things that we began this summer was a community garden. It had been one of my goals for some time, but never got implemented until this year. We had our ups and downs but basically it was a success. Last night, after enjoying some corn on the cob direct from the garden,  I sat down to write a little poem about our community garden experience. I hope you enjoy it. It's called:

Ode to a Community Garden

There was a community garden

That started quite nice - if you pardon!

            Many families indeed

            Came to help plant the seed.

And that was the start of our garden.

The rain - it watered our soil.

The sun? It was also loyal.

The seeds they grew!

But the weeds did too!

But our garden the weeds won’t spoil!

“Come pull the weeds” was my pleading!

And many did come at my leading.

            But the heat of the sun

            Made some families run.

And a few were left to the weeding.

With no help our hearts did not harden!

We knew it was all in the bargain.

            We ate quite a bit

            So I have to admit

It was a successful garden!

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