When you think about
the great commandment you probably think of this:
Love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your
strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is
no commandment greater than these.”
But does Jesus mean even when you are under
resourced? Mission Southside can be
found in 20 under resourced apartment communities around Johnson County. When we go in, it is not with the mindset
that we will do everything for that community and enable them. It is with the mindset that we are loving our
neighbors in community WITH one another.
It is not an US and a THEM, it is a WE.
At one local apartment
complex, a resident named Pilar, delivers welcome baskets to new
residents. She creates them with items
from Mission Southside and some items donated by the site team. This has become her little ministry. She welcomes people to the apartment
community, she invites kids to Homework Huddle and moms to bible study. She finds out is people have very little or
are perhaps sleeping on the floor and she contacts Mission Southside to perhaps
get a bed for kids sleeping on the floor.
At another complex a
gentleman who has lived there for 8 years has started a Food Co-op
Ministry. He retrieves the food that is
sorted at Mission Southside on Fridays and delivers it to his apartment
complex. He knows when his neighbors
have been in the hospital, he knows the neighbors who perhaps have recently
lost a job. He also knows the single
moms who struggle every month to keep food on the table for their kids. He works at McDonalds, but happens to be off
on Friday. This gentleman walks a little
bit taller and is doing his part. He
even has a Mission Southside t-shirt.
We can all love our
neighbors. We all have something to
give. It may be our time, it may be our
talent and it may even be our money. But
all of these things can help to raise up leaders right in the communities we
are serving, and empower them to bring what they have to give.
