My friend, Maria, is a social worker for an elementary school in a distressed neighborhood outside of Atlanta. At the end of this last school year, a third grade girl was brought to her office after having a melt down. The girl had always been a good student and never had any behavioral problems. The teacher’s aide escorting her in said that the young girl had been found crying in the bathroom clutching her backpack.

Although born near Chicago, a portion of my early childhood was spent with my mother’s family in a small village in The Philippines. By western standards, most of our village was extremely poor. Truth was, each family didn’t own very much and alone some would not have survived. Because we did life together, though, we thrived. I was never hungry nor did I feel unprotected (even with some wild animals for neighbors). Our community was living in abundance without much stuff. 

This past Saturday, our Summit family participated in our 30th niceSERVE. During these 30 events, our church has invested over 100k hours of our time into the local community and served hundreds of local nonprofits, schools, and other churches. Each hour given has been a very public testament to our belief that God has invited us into building his kingdom by tending to all of creation and loving people well.