Better Than A Yard Sale

I know you're all dying to know about yard saleing on Sat. (haha) but I didn't get to go this weekend.  Instead, I was able to see some of the most precious kids in the world get the chance to live out some of their dreams.   It wasn't the olympics, but it might as well been for how amazing some of them did.   

I have the privilege of working with children from our neighborhood in an afterschool program.   These kids don't get a lot of opportunities to do the things that you and I were privey to as kids.   They don't have private art or dance lessons, annual trips to the mountains and/or beach, fun outings to get ice cream, or even to go to an occasional baseball game.   So you can imagine how neat it was for them to be able to participate in the Children's Race at the marathon on Saturday.

We were blessed to have one of our tutors offer to sponsor any of the children that wanted to participate in the race.   So we got them signed up, and they were picked up by their tutor by 7:45 on Sat. morning, and brought them to race.   You know, we should have trained them, and bought them all running shorts, and had them all prepared.   However, much like the apple pie incident, we were the last minute contestants, who hadn't really well prepared, and our poor kids were running in their baggy, saggy, jeans, and their worn out sneakers.     But they couldn't wait.   And run, they did.

Here are a couple pictures of some of our cuties.

The most amazing part, was not seeing our kids place first, second, and third in almost every age category, though that was pretty great.   The greatest part to me, was seeing our tutors give one of their Saturday mornings, to make something wonderful happen for these little ones.    To show these children that they do deserve a chance to run.   That they are special enough to get up early and spend a morning with.   And that they are talented enough to be a part of (and even win) an extraordinary event.   It blessed my heart more than a hundred yard sales.