The following account of our family mission trip (Christmas of 2007) was written for a church presentation shortly before we climbed onto a cruiser bus and left the Chicago suburbs for five days in Kansas:

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“On Labor Day weekend this year, our family began brainstorming about how we could get away from the materialism of the holidays, the shopping, spending, competition and so on. The rush to buy gifts for each other every year and to get together at one party after another for ourselves seemed more and more off point. A couple of our thirty-somethings suggested we focus on helping someone who was needy, since none of us need anything.

“Long story short, 31 of us, ages 68 down to 5 months old and all related, will be leaving on Christmas Eve in a rented coach bus to drive 15 hours from Chicago to Greensburg, Kansas. A mile-wide tornado mowed down the entire town last summer.

“We’ll be gone for five days and will be dry-walling, painting, cleaning up yards and anything else the people in Greensburg will ask us to do. We’ll be sleeping on the floor in a church basement ten miles down the road. We’re funding the trip with the money we would have used to buy Christmas gifts for each other, and this year there are no gifts under the tree. We’ve created a group motto, which is ‘Working together as a family for the benefit of others.’

“People have asked if this is a mission trip. It’s more like an experiment, something new for us. We’re trying to approach Christmas in the way Jesus would, setting aside the shopping, gifts, wrapping, spending and overeating in exchange for service hours that will benefit someone else.

We’re hoping good things will come of our labor for those in Kansas but also good stuff amongst ourselves as we join together for a common purpose while working and living in tight quarters. It’ll be a stretch, but we feel God has been involved in the planning and has some surprise blessings ready for each person involved.

“Some of our family members are excited and enthusiastic about the trip while others are skeptical but are going anyway. Our family newspaper, The Kansas Chronicle, has conducted contests, outlined medical advice, forecasted Kansas weather, shared packing lists, detailed prayer requests and explained the history of Kansas.

“Each team member, in addition to working on construction crews, has an additional job: photographer, nurse, videographer, journalist, cell phone control, food prep, child care, budget chief, athletic director, program director and more. One of the cousins won a ‘Name-Our-Trip’ contest with KAN-DO… ‘kan’ for Kansas and ‘do’ for ‘We can do it!’ “

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When we arrived in Greensburg, what we found was utter destruction.

Tomorrow’s blog: How did it go?

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” (Ecclesiastes 9:10)