Princesses for a Day: Chicktime Brings Hope + Fun to New Life Girls

The service group “Chicktime” is hosting a special volunteer event at New Life Children’s Center Saturday, August 11^th, with leader Lora Williams guiding the activities – to include discussion about making good decisions along with beauty tips and “Princessy” things.

Lora Williams can relate. Her life growing up was very similar to the backgrounds of the girls at New Life. She is the founding leader of the Chicktime San Marcos chapter and volunteers extensively as a mentor and life coach with the girls in the Gary Job Corp program.

Lora is a walking success story of intervention, and she has dedicated her life to showing young women that there is life after abuse. Lora put herself through school, is now a Registered Nurse, and is still continuing her education. Lora is the founding leader of World Vision’s Austin Women of Vision chapter. She advocates “locally and globally for better laws to protect marginalized women and children on planet earth.” She also has a heart for Kenya and works to alleviate the suffering in that country through fundraising and raising awareness among local churches.

Chicktime volunteers needed and appreciated!

Chicktime is a grass roots movement created to serve the next generation, by bringing together groups of women using their unique gifts in the service of others. Chicktime New Life encourages the girls at the Center through structured interaction and fun projects every month that bring a bright spot into their lives.

Chicktime always welcomes new volunteers! If you’re in Central Texas and want to make a difference in the lives of the troubled young women (ages 11-17) at New Life, Chicktime is a wonderful way to get involved and make new friends. Chicktime is a “no-commitment” organization so if someone only comes once just to check out New Life, that’s okay. Chicktime appreciates any and all opportunities to show off the work New Life does to help these deserving girls! Interested? To learn more call or email New Life Director of Volunteers Lisa Brown: lisa.brown@lsss.org; 830-964-4390. Enjoy the video!

Singing the Praises of Our Unsung Heroes During Foster Care Month

We’d like you to meet another one of our amazing foster families: Steve and Connie Murr. We think they’re amazing because of the work they do with our Foster In Texas (FIT) kids. The Murrs have fostered more than 200 children over the past 30 years! A big percentage of these children have had serious medical conditions that require extensive monitoring and a high level of care.

This video gives a little glimpse into “a day in the life” of the Murrs. They are busy people who love what they do – caring for the children who need it the most. Since May is National Foster Care Month, please join us in singing the praises of families like the Murrs! It’s also a great time to consider if becoming a foster parent might be in your own future—our online interest form is the starting point …

Fire and Rain: LSS Disaster Response, Texas Wildfires

photo courtesy of Nancy Wood Miller

After seemingly endless days of hazy, smoke-filled horizons and the smell of fire in the air, there was a new and almost foreign smell in Central Texas this weekend—the smell of rain.  For plenty of folks around the country, they wish the rain would cease, go somewhere else.  But for us Texans, the sound, the feel, the smell of rain seems like a distant memory or something that we dreamed of one night long ago.  But then this weekend, it rained.  It wasn’t a gully-washer, flash flood-enducer or drought breaker, but a slow, easy, steady, soft rain.  I admit, I went outside and stood in it, breathing deeply in the damp, earthy smell that made everything around me feel alive again.  Just watching the raindrops hit and then roll down my arms produced a child-like, visceral joy in me.  Ah, rain, it does exist.  It will come again.

That beautiful rain did wonders to assist the firefighters in Bastrop County with their ongoing efforts to extinguish the Bastrop County Complex Fire, which is now reported as 95% contained.  Other wildfires in Central Texas continue to have hot spots, but are fully contained.  Survivors have been able to re-enter their neighborhoods to survey the damage and to begin to get a sense of what they will need for the way forward.  And that way forward can be a long and winding road.  Piecing one’s life back together after a disaster is a journey, one through which each disaster survivor must work to adjust to the “new normal” of the post wildfire world.  It is during this process of long-term recovery that agencies like LSSDR work to walk side-by-side with survivors, helping them to develop a personalized road-map so that they may successfully navigate that long and winding road to recovery.

As I ponder the beginning of the long-term recovery process for wildfire survivors, I keep coming back to something I learned from the emergency response personnel in both Bastrop and Spicewood, Texas last week—that roots of trees can burn underground.  I know, it sounds impossible, but it happens.  Firefighters across Central Texas have been dealing with flare-ups due to the roots of trees burning underground, weakening the stability of the trees, causing them to eventually fall over, thus letting the fire escape from the roots only to reignite a blaze.  This is a poignant analogy for what disaster survivors may experience throughout long-term recovery.  While all on the surface may seem to have calmed, there may be emotional, spiritual, and financial fires burning deep down that will flare-up at a moment’s notice due to the trauma of the disaster event and the stress of the recovery process.  Yes, people’s roots are burning.  And it is LSSDR and our partner agencies that plan to catch them as they fall and work with them to prevent those burning roots from spreading the fire.  Whether through emotional and spiritual care or long-term disaster case management, we strive to be that gentle, soothing, thirst-quenching rain that brings with it renewal, resilience and hope.

So, once again I ask you to please pray for rain.

Heather Neuroth Gatlin, MPA

Vice President of Disaster Response

Lutheran Social Services Disaster Response

Report on the Appleseed Challenge: The kids had fun, Deion lobbied, and Krause came in second

When the new Appleseed Express Carwash in Katy kicked off with its first “Appleseed Challenge” last month, the Krause Children’s Center was privileged to be one of the first three nonprofits selected to participate. [See the original Appleseed Carwash story, which explains how this philanthropic business venture benefits the children in the area as it puts a quick shine on the vehicles of busy professionals and families on-the-go.]

Alas, when the number of carwashes/votes were tallied on October 31, the Langham Creek YMCA nipped Krause Children’s Center for the first place spot, taking home $7,000 to help fund their new computer lab. Krause received a much-needed $2,000 in “seed money” for its afterschool programs, but in fact, received so much more in the realm of public awareness. The Challenge brought many new supporters and donors who have never given to the facility, along with producing a raft of phone calls from people wanting to learn more about the Center and offering to volunteer their services. 

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During the days of the challenge, Karma the Flying Frisbee Dog, the National Charity League, FBLA Cinco Ranch High School, Seven Lakes High School, and Tea Cakes the Clown all came out in support of Krause Children’s Center.

But perhaps our biggest fan and drawing card was Deion, an irresistibly cute little guy whose mom brought him to the carwash to support the Krause kids. Deion, who has been a kidney patient since birth, stood out in the heat for three hours stumping for the kids at Krause.  Many of the drivers passing by stopped to get their cars washed because he walked right up and asked them to! He was so cute they couldn’t turn him down.  Others stopped by and gave donations because he was there.  Tawana Goodwin, Krause’s director of volunteers, said “It really brought tears to my eyes to see Deion, who struggles with kidney and liver trouble, take the time out to help children he never knew. Every day he is on a dialysis machine for eight hours, and for him to have the strength to do this really blessed all of us! It made our cause small. DEION WAS A HUGE HIT!”

Goodwin also reported that the excitement at the carwash was contagious, and the Krause kids themselves got involved and had fun with the customers. “Many of the supporters who arrived at the carwash had no idea they were talking to the very children who have endured such pain in their lives,” she said.

Appleseed Express Carwashes are expanding to many new locations in Texas―as ongoing fundraisers for kids’ causes. Their motto is “Where every wash helps local kids.” The Krause kids are living proof of that!

I Am Tiger Woods

I am fascinated by the man we simply call Tiger. What I respect most is his never-ending quest for perfection on the golf course. He is the best golfer in the world and still continues to relentlessly strive to improve his game. We can all learn from his work ethic as we strive to enhance our own God-given talents.

However, recently many of us also took pleasure in ridiculing Tiger Woods. We reveled in stories about his numerous mistresses and purported $750 million divorce settlement. The circus-like media feeding frenzy made for great entertainment as we momentarily ignored our own short comings and jumped on the paparazzi bandwagon. However, if we are honest as we unpeel our own onion, we must all admit that Tiger’s failings are at times also ours.

In retrospect it is clear that Tiger became enslaved to his own ego. Instead of asking, “Who can I serve today?” he mistakenly assumed that the world was his oyster – he was entitled to “consume” all that he desired. Sadly, my guess is that Tiger can closely and belatedly relate to the words of the contemplative writer, Thomas Merton, “What a strange thing? In fulfilling myself I had emptied myself. In grasping things, I had lost everything. In devouring pleasures and joys, I had found distress, anguish, and fear.”

The point is not to judge a fallen hero but rather to utilize this very public hanging to courageously illuminate the failings of our own lives as we seek to live a life of significance; to honestly examine the rubbish hidden within our own personal cellar. It is a reminder of just how easy it is to become inward- focused as we push God and others out of the center of our lives. As lapsed Christian and Air Force fighter pilot Howard Rutledge ruefully acknowledged after being shot down and captured by the enemy in the Vietnam conflict, it took prison to show how empty his life is without God. He observed, “My hunger for spiritual food outdid my hunger for a steak.”

When we are unmindful of our special status as God’s baptized, it is easy for all of us to live in the “insanity” of our sin. We lose sight of the importance of our relationship with God and we hurt those who we love the most – in Tiger’s case – his family. Rather than denying ourselves and taking up our cross, as Jesus demands, we live with what Eckhart Tolle calls an “illusion of self.”

However, when Christ is in the center and forefront of our lives we are able to distinguish between our cravings and our true needs. We are able to naturally move from asking, “How do I want to live out my life?” to “How does God want me to live out my life?” Our autopilot becomes, “Who can I serve today?”

In my role at Lutheran Social Services, I am honored and humbled to be surrounded by society’s true heroes – the staff, foster families, and dedicated volunteers who day-in and day-out care and sacrifice on behalf of our clients and each other in a myriad of mundane and unsexy actions. They understand that true Christian love is merely a preference of others over one’s self. Like a beautiful piece of art, they weave their work and faith together in a way that mirrors God’s image here on earth. Yes, it is they (and not our media-hyped celebrities) who are our true role models as they and we live a life of significance in service to others.

Dr. Kurt Senske is chief executive officer of Lutheran Social Services of the South and author of The Calling: Live a Life of Significance (forthcoming, November, 2010)

TLFC: Tender Loving Foster Care in Tyler

Foster mom Lois Williams gets a hug. (Photo by Jaime R. Carrero of the Tyler Morning Telegraph.)

Ask a foster parent “Why do you do it?” and the answer will almost always be the same, or a variation thereof: It’s a calling, a way to give love to the children who need it most.

Recently, reporter Melissa Crowe of the Tyler Morning Telegraph wrote a moving story that included an interview with Lois and Burnett Williams, Lutheran Social Services foster parents since 2002. Used to having “a houseful of kids,” the Tyler couple raised five of their own children before fostering the 25 kids who have since come and gone from their home.

Lois Williams just loves kids.”If I could adopt the whole world, I would. There are so many children out there hurting,” she said. Their story in the Tyler paper brings attention to the critical need for foster parents in East Texas (specifically Tyler, Longview, Athens, Canton, and Nacogdoches) but the shortage of foster homes is an existing challenge throughout Texas.

The foster home shortage is particularly critical for teens and sibling groups according to Shelley Reese, area director for LSS in Tyler.

Being a foster parent is all about loving the children in your care … and helping them be the best they can be. “You don’t have to go out and spend a fortune. Love doesn’t cost one dime,” Mrs. Williams said. Now, how can LSS clone Lois and Burnett Williams?

Community Comes Together for Krause Prom

This is not the first year Krause has had a prom. But this prom is certainly shaping up to be the most memorable.

It was the Katy Chamber of Commerce that really got the ball rolling. Chamber CEO and president Ann Hodge was determined to help the kids at Krause Children’s Center have “A Night to Remember” ―which just happens to be the theme of the prom this Friday, May 21^st.

So the Katy Chamber successfully collected more than 80 dresses for the 50 Krause girls, and arranged to rent tuxes for the guys. Then they started collecting shoes (no plastic flip-flops for this prom!) and are paying for the DJ and corsages.

Tawana Goodwin, Krause director of volunteer services, felt the momentum and volunteer energy building, and ran with it, emailing other schools and service groups. There has been an overwhelming response from Krause staff members who are volunteering to help chaperone and fill in where needed.

Absolutely! Magazine has stepped up to provide the food and HCTV-worthy decorations.

On Monday, Krause friends from the Monarch School came by to donate 60 dresses, which they collected in one week!

And the list goes on:

· One volunteer mentor shopped online to gather 50 prom dresses

· Nine volunteers are on board for hairstyling

· Thursday night the National Charity League, Azalea Chapter is having a “Shoe and toe Party” ― an assembly line of pedicures

· Seven Lakes High School collected money for the tuxedoes

And the Dress Total Hits …

Perhaps most extraordinary, is how the word spread and the prom dresses kept rolling in: reaching a grand total by Monday night of (drum roll, fist bump) 500! After volunteers sorted the dresses by size, the 50 girls had 10 dresses each and piles of shoes to choose from, and Tawana Goodwin reports that the shopping frenzy Monday night was as much fun as it sounds.

This is only Chapter One of the Krause Prom story. Chapter Two will be the recap of “A Night to Remember.”

To quote Tawana, “This is what coming together as a community is all about!”