I’ve come to the conclusion that you can have a great idea, but without a great team behind you—it will never go beyond your wildest imagination.

This weekend was the launch of our second annual IES Outreach campaign. Our theme this year is “The least. The Last. The Lost.” As I was meeting with my team for the event, they came up with the idea of the “Search and Rescue Campaign.” Over the last month and a half we have been working on making that idea a reality.

It was 2pm Saturday afternoon, three hours before service was about to start and we were going to launch he campaign. It was just me and one other volunteer in the office, waiting for 800 boxes to come so we could stuff leaves in them for the gift for the first weekend…I was trying to stay calm, but was starting to get a bit nervous. The boxes finally came at 3pm, 2 hours before service was supposed to start, and one hour before I had my volunteer briefing for what they were to do during service. I was staring at the pile of boxes and leaves, and now I really was nervous. Then one by one, various members of the IES staff and my committee started coming and stuffing boxes, putting on the lids, moving them to where they needed to go. In about 5 minutes we were functioning like a well-oiled machine. We were done with the first 400 in about an hour. It so blew me away that not only were they willing to spend part of their Saturday stuffing boxes, but they did it with such joy and excitement—it made it fun!

Once the boxes were done, we all came downstairs and launched our Search & Rescue campaign. We had the opportunity to talk to people about what it means to reach out to those who are overlooked and hidden. In true IES fashion there was such an overwhelmingly positive response. People want to be involved, they want to be part of team that reaches beyond themselves to those who are forgotten.

If you aren’t part of a team, you miss out–because, as I’m learning, it’s in community, in working together, that we can stretch ourselves and together make something better than we could have imagined.

I am so humbled and honored to be a part of a community of people that wants to take serving to the next level… to be involved, to make a difference, to make an eternal impact.

I am excited to see what the rest of the month holds!