For the past couple of years, I have received an email every month or so letting me know about the need for volunteers to help at citizenship workshops in the area. These workshops help immigrants with green cards navigate the complicated process of applying for US citizenship. In order for volunteers to help at a workshop, they understandably have to go through a training to learn about that complicated process. Every time I received the email I would think, "I would really like to do this . . . I really should do this . . . it is such an important issue in my community." But, alas, month after month it felt like I didn't have time to give both a Friday night and a Saturday, so it remained on the "should do" list.
Until this month.
Last Friday night, most of us on the East Aurora Restore team attended the two hour training and then on Saturday went to East Aurora High School to help residents attending the workship fill out the long and rather confusing application. It was a fantastic experience, and now that we have been trained, any of us can (and I am sure will) help at future workshops.
So, why was this month different? What motivated me to take action after all this time?
Having a team to do it with. And not because I was scared to go alone or felt intimidated by the process. Doing it with a team was simply more fun and provided more accountability and incentive to move from thinking about doing it to actually doing it.
And that is exactly the reason we needed to form this East Aurora Restore Team. Not because we need to come up with a grand new vision about how to impact our community. But because as a Team, I believe we are 100% more likely to do all those things that as individuals we've been thinking we "should do" or "would like to do." But, I do suspect that as we do those things we will develop a bigger vision for how we can impact our community.
All it took to move from thinking to doing was having a team.
Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one heart and purpose.--Philippians 2:2
We moved to East Aurora from Naperville in 2007, and our kids have attended the public elementary and middle schools in District 131. Kirsten directs Community 4:12 at CCC, and Scott teaches 3rd grade at one of our partner schools, Bardwell Elementary. While we've worked and served in East Aurora since 2003, it has only been since moving here that we have built deep and lasting relationships that have quite honestly been life changing . . . from a teenage girl we've been able to mentor to a single mom and her kids that have become like family to us. Our boys have experienced cultural and economic diversity and learned "life lessons" that can't be taught in even the best of schools. We absolutely love living in East Aurora!


I spent the first third of my 63 years growing up in an affluent suburb, assuming that I knew a lot about the real world. Going off to college in the late sixties introduced me to a world filled with color, diversity, excitement and injustice. These last 4 decades have been spent in a variety of diverse settings - raising our family in a small but multi-cultural city - being blessed with friends from a broad range of racial, ethnic, educational and economic diversity - helping to raise children who have experienced challenges that break my heart - and traveling to nations, thus witnessing the profound faith of the truly impoverished. Jesus continues to stretch my comfort zone and open my eyes. Life is good........ being a neighbor on the East Side of Aurora is good....... understanding that I can truly contribute to the healing of the world is good!