Seed A Need

one seed. one vision. millions affected.

We just got our seed a need cards in the mail and we are so excited!! Agent J first introduced us to seed a need through her blog. (Thanks J!) The idea is to change the world through unlimited good deeds from one person to the next. Seed a need sends out cards with the seed a need logo, the website, and card number, and these simple instructions:

Perform an act of kindness to someone

Then give them the card

or have someone give it to them.

"Give and it shall be given" Luke 6:38

The cool part about this project is that everytime the card is passed, the recipient of the good deed can go online and leave a comment about what happened. If everyone does this, then each card tracks all of the good that is being done and also where the card is! How neat is that?!

So don't just sit around and wait for a card to come to you! Get in on the fun by going to the website and signing up- you will recieve 3 seed a need cards to start your mission! (While you're there, check out the great ideas the site has to get you started!)

The SEED of good deeds become a tree of life! Proverbs 11:30

Stay tuned to find out how we will seed needs!

CHF Southwest Grand Opening

Last weekend we were back in San Antonio for Children's Hunger Fund's Southwest Grand Opening! It was a great day- the weather was beautiful, the sky was blue, and there were balloons at the entrance!!! (We love balloons!) The inside of the building was just as great. A lot of hard work and dedication was finally revealed!

At the start of the tour we walked through the break room to the assembly room. Here we were stopped to see a long line of kids that spanned the whole length of the room- youth volunteers from CBC. A rolling surface moves box after box after box, from one end to the other while the kids place there designated item into the box. From the rollers, the box is taken, packed, sealed, and stacked. This is the room where all of the processing will be done, and with the new layout and set up, boxes can be assembled so much more efficiently!

We were then moved through sliding doors into the training room,. This is where the important relational training takes place to teach people how to distribute the boxes to local families. Everyone who wants to hand out Food Paks needs to go through this training in this beautiful new room. There were also vegetable trays and fruit trays for snacking - they treat you real god when you volunteer! Yum!

Next on the tour was a room that we had been in before when we helped process the boxes a few posts back... But this new and improved room had shelves with stocked water, rice, beans, canned food, toys= everything you need to run an organizations as great as this one! Much of it was recently donated. At the end of each aisle was a table stacked with items and a description of what it is, how it serves, and how it is distributed.

Chairs filled the center of the room and a stage was make of Food Pak boxes! In each chair was a book mark and a card. Everyone picked a seat after taking the tour and waited for the opening ceremony to start. We got to meet and visit with James Massey, the Missions Coordinator at Oak Hills church. During the ceremony we heard from about five different people, all of them excited and thankful for the great things that are happening in San Antonio with the opening of this new location. Lot of prayers, lots of praise, lots of cheers for CHF and God's plans for the future! At the end, everyone was asked to fill out the card to support CHF through prayer and the bookmark is to help us remember the different points of the ministry pray for. At the end of the morning we got to meet and see a lot of great people. Dave Phillips, founder of CHF, and Michael Richards, Regional Director, and our friend Charlene Webster :) were there as well as a few more people from CHF- sorry we can't remember everyone's name! We even made a new friend Amy, Hi Amy! It was a great day, and we has such a good time! We were glad to be a part of such an exciting event and so excited about what God is going to do through the new location and all the wonderful volunteers who serve there! We even left with two new really cool shirts!

Check out our morning in pictures:

the training room

Dave Phillips

Us and Charlene!

Sweet, new shirts!
(The back has a picture of the Food Pak and also the website.)

More Free Food!!

So we haven't bought groceries for 3 weeks!!! We've been living off the free food from G'ma's house and whatever else we had in the pantry when we started. We planned to go without grocery shopping for only two weeks, but by the end, we still had tons of food leftover! So we started week 3!



This week has been a little more difficult since we've pretty much run out of breakfast foods and snacks...but take a look at the picture above...all of this we have recieved for free this week! Free samples in the mail from my new favorite website- shop4freebies.com, free snacks after donating blood, free Whataburgers for wearing orange on Tuesday, and 2 free $10 Panera gift cards from the mall! Plus, my mom sends us home with leftovers everytime we visit! lol! Also, Frankie's week has been packed with lunch meetings and office dinners where he feasts on someone elses dollar!



So we have made it through 3 whole weeks of Food Pak inspired eating without spending a dime on groceries!!! (Although, we did slip a few times on the last week and had some fast food meals...totally unplanned. :/ But they were still pretty cheap.)



We still have some canned goods left in the pantry so we will see what happens next week!

Other Christmas Gifts

Speaking of Christmas presents...November is a great time to start Christmas shopping! Before all the hustle and bustle and the craziness that comes after Thanksgiving, Operation Christmas Child and other similar programs launch their campaigns. This works because they need to have time to process and ship the gifts before Christmas, but it also works out that you have the chance to shop for others first! Coincidence? I think not! ;)

Similar to Operation Christmas Child, Oak Hills has built relationships over the years with two orphanages- one in Haiti and one in Nicaragua. This includes some medical mission trips, as well as summer and winter mission trips. So for Christmas they pack shoeboxes full of clothes, school supplies, toiletries, toys, and other little goodies for all the children, nannies, and pastors at these orphanages then hand deliver them! It's pretty neat!

We did 7 boxes this year (practicing giving uncomfortably). Definitely not by our own means, and not because we are $bags, as we were referred to on Sunday! ;) LOL! But because we serve an amazing God who chooses to work through obedient and willing hearts! A lot of the money came from simply selling stuff on Craigslist! Really! Stuff that we had lying around (fish tanks, small pieces of furniture, and so on)...the cash really adds up! So instead of putting it in to a bank account where it gets lost with the rest of spending, we stashed it for November! It was so exciting to see it build up!

It's also so much fun to shop for all the goodies to fill the boxes! Here's what we bought:

For Fred

For Mama Hilda

For Guerby

For Dakinlove and Junia

my favorite gifts! so cute!

For Dudre and Dudro (twins! :)

Majority of the shoeboxes Sunday morning at Journey! Great job, guys! (Also, some wrapped Foster Tree Angel gifts for foster children in Guadalupe County!)

All We Want for Christmas

It's that time of year again, and family and friends have started to ask the question "What do you want for Christmas?" And even though we would love for everyone to participate in Advent Conspiracy, some people still like to give gifts. So for those people, here is our response... this is the Official TaylorFrankie Christmas Wish List!





1. A reusable water thermos from charity:water. Thermos partnered with charity:water to create hydrationforall and this really cool thermos. The best part is that 100% of the profit from this product goes to building wells for people who need clean water.

2. This H2Africa hand made bracelet by Amy Smith is at the Water4Christmas Etsy shop. This shop features a variety of sellers whose product sales are donated 100% to finding a solution for clean water in villages in Liberia, West Africa.

3. Children's Hunger Fund Menu features great gifts for giving and receiving. You can send food, Bibles, shoes, bikes, toys, and other goods to people in need. Anything from the Menu would make us happy, as well as a lot of other people.

4. charity:water bracelets are a great way to show support to a good cause, and again, 100% of the profits go to building wells!

5. A stained glass water drop ornament by Barb Bulluck also for H2Africa at the Water4Christmas Etsy shop.

6. For every pair of TOMS shoes sold, another pair is sent to a child in need. These shoes are awesome and are a two-for-one deal!

7. This Every Child's Right Shirt raises money for a family's adoption. Also, when you purchase this shirt, you can mention another family (we found out about it through the Block Family) and a portion of the profits goes to help fund their adoption as well!


Water, food, homes, shoes, life... this is what we want for Christmas.

Advent Conspiracy 2009

Advent Conspiracy's 2009 video!

Again, inspiring and encouraging! Enjoy and share!

ALS Part Three: ALS Walk

Here we are! All of that hard-work, fundraising paying off! Here at the ALS walk to D'feat ALS, all of the teams came together to walk for a cure! Free breakfast, fun games, jammin' music, free lunch, and free t-shirts for everyone who shows up on time and isn't in the car driving around looking for a parking spot as the opening ceremonies start... (the shirts were really cool this year, and we are really sad we didn't get one...). But we still had fun with all of our family and friends! Check out the photos!

Frankie representing!

Nothing but smiles on a beautiful day!

Here is the lady we are doing it all for!!!
We love you Tia Chita!! :D

We have big things in the works for next years ALS fundraising efforts! We'll be sure to share it here when it comes around!

Thanks to all our friends and family who helped support through Frankie's walk page! Ya'll are great!

ALS Part Two: Softball Tournament

The second event we helped out in was the first annual Chita's Angels Softball Tournament! We couldn't play because we had to be at a wedding later that day, but we did do our part by manning the concession. Although we didn't win, everyone had a lot of fun!

Taylor selling sandwiches. :)

Dad running home!

All the Angels ():)

ALS Part One: Benefit

Ok, so it may not seem like we've been very adveturesome, but actually we've been so busy being adventerous that we forgot to post! Ok, that and we were being a little lazy...
But here's what we've been up to:

Lately we've been busy on the weekends working to "Strike Out ALS". ALS is also known as Lou Gherig's disease. It's a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. Frankie's aunt, Chita, has been living with this disease for over 6 years. She's strong and inspiring and it's great to be able to help out and raise money to fund research and find a cure! Over the past couple months we have participated in a Benefit Dinner and Dance, a Softball Tournament, and the Walk to D'feet ALS! Here are some of the pics from the benefit:

The Family

We made cupcakes for the bake sale!

Buc-ees silent acution gift.

Candy Basket silent auction gift.

The outcome for this was great this year! It's always fun to get together with all the family and half the town of Devine and all together we raised a lot of money for a good cause!

Check out the rest of the cupcake pictures on Taylor's Facebook!

Mystery Can

Out of all the food we received, one can stood out from the rest.
One can was just a little too plain and had us scratching our heads.
This can was large and had no paper label, instead printed on the side were the words Pork in Juices.

I think that the fact that it was meat, and not tuna or chicken, made us grab it. But what we would do with a can that looked like it could have a whole snout in it, was a mystery. After pushing it aside for a week, we decided it was time! We looked online for something to make and found a recipe for BBQ pork. We opened the can to find a solid chunk of meat (about the size of a snout, lol!) and forked it out in clumps into the pan. It actually turned out to be like pulled pork sandwhich meat. :) I made some BBQ sauce from a few things we already had and also some rice and beans. When it was all done the scariest can in the pantry turned out to be the best dinner we've had during our Food Pak inspired eating!

Week 2

This is our second week of our Food Pak inspired eating, thanks to the free surplus we found at Grandma's house.

Lunch today is tuna and crackers... yum!