About a month ago our 12 year old gave me the best Father's Day gift he could give me, even though it was not intentionally done on Father's Day, but rather happened as a culmination of a desire to spend time with the little ones at church, and finally having the time to do so with the end of school and having no hockey games, etc. He'd submitted his service application to Mrs. Diana Matthews the Sunday prior, and we knew Mrs. Matthews had her hands full with upcoming Vacation Bible School plans to start the day after Father's Day. He was eager to get started even though we didn't hear back from her, so I coached him on what to say in case he was able to find her that next Sunday morning: "No pressure at all, but I know you've been busy with Camp Compass so you may not have been able to get to our email. If it's OK with you I'm willing to start today..."
We did find her that Father's Day morning at the teachers' prayer meeting, and from a distance I saw him nervously give his spiel, to which by the looks of his big smile she had said "Yes"!
Afterward, he came to me excitedly recounting his time with the 2 and 3 year olds:
- Daddy, you don't know how hard it is to take care of six kids!
- he was teamed up with a gal in his grade, as well as a high school gal
- "really fun!"
- he had made his own play structure with chairs and a foldable popup playtents (Bob the Builder)
- apparently he was so into the helping little ones mode that after church when we went to Costco we bumped into a 2 year old boy from Compass who had just finished a food sample, and Jadon nearly automatically took his trash from the little one "because that's what I was doing the whole time" with the kids
What really made me know he had joyfully found his niche is what he said to JJ as he recounted the stories to her: "I really want six kids, Mommy, even if they're naughty!"
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