12 youth and 10 adults showed up to participate in this compassion project throughout the morning and afternoon. The group weeded two major sections of the yard, leveled the ground, built the raised garden beds, moved and filled the beds and surrounding ground with dirt, planted the vegetables and flowers, covered the ground with mulch to protect against weeds, all while having great attitudes, working hard, and learning to be people of compassion. Check out the photos below!

As always, the group of youth gathered together in the Precious Lamb classroom to discuss what compassion is, why it is important and what it means to live as people of compassion on a regular basis. They also talked about how planting a garden is an act of compassion and how it can be used to help show love to the people in the community.

LIME had a wonderful time and is looking forward to expand the garden project into more beds later this year. Contact us, follow us, or like us for regular updates and news!

The project was made possible by generous donations of friends of LIME as well as Home Depot (2450 Cherry Ave., Long Beach, Ca, 90755), Ganahl’s Lumber, and South Coast Supply (3626 Cerritos Ave., Los Alamitos, Ca 90720).

Thank you for your support and belief in LIME and what it is doing!

Sunday, March 11th, 2012 LIME is going to the Long Beach Rescue Mission to serve lunch to those in the community in need of a warm meal. As usual, we will begin with a time of learning which will take place at the Walkemeyer’s house in Long Beach. From there we will carpool to the Long Beach Rescue Mission to serve.

TIME: 8:30am-1:30pm

DATE: Sunday, March 11, 2012

BRING: Closed toe shoes, t-shirt & jeans (you don’t mind getting dirty), permission slip

**There is only room for 10 people! Sign-up ASAP to get your spot!

For more information, check out the flier for this project here: Long Beach Rescue Mission Flier

Or email Lindsey Walkemeyer-Taylor: lindsey@limeworks.org.

Hope to see you there!

What else is there to say?

We are overwhelmed by each of you that helped to make our Christmas Dinner Box distribution a success by giving of your time, energy, personal resources, and prayer support! Thank you for your willingness to partner with LIME as we blaze ahead with our new vision and focus on Compassion for the Next Generation!

Although some time has passed from this event, we still wanted to share with you some of the highlights of the project:

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you again for helping LIME bless so many people this Christmas. It truly was an unforgettable opportunity to extend and instill compassion to the next generation in new ways! We look forward to more projects to come!

Below are some of the pictures of the whole process:

Every year during the Christmas season people are faced with huge decisions in how to spend their time and money. It is interesting to see how the busyness and normality of the U.S. Christmas culture has seemed to disguise these huge decisions to be necessity rather than choice, and stripped the potential meaning behind each decision and covered it with a drive to wear ourselves out, buy things we can’t afford, and glamorize a season that is intended to be simple and deeply meaningful.

In no way am I against the joy of seeing family and friends, creating opportunities for community and bestowing gifts on people that I love, but I am curious how many of us (myself included) take time to think about why we do these things. Are our motives for our well-being and truly the well-being of others? Or are our motives actually a sub-conscious attempt to prove our worth through how perfect or festive or fun or memorable each thing we do during Christmas appears to other people? Is it really about how much we love people around us and want to create environments of love for others to experience and be invited into? Or will it sound good telling the stories of these things and how we wore ourselves out to please others…or even how much we donated and gave at Christmas?

It is easy to forget what is important when we feel pressure from around every corner to live the Christmas season in a very particular way (even if we think we are doing what is important).

This Christmas more than anything else, I hope that you take time to reflect and spend this season filled with meaning and truth and love and peace and great joy!

And in the midst of your reflection, if you realize that you desire to give something more than what will be forgotten in January, and to make a difference even possibly without anyone hearing about it, LIME invites you to give the gift of compassion this Christmas.

For $25 you can sponsor a Christmas Dinner Box that will be given to a family in need in North Long Beach next Saturday, December 17th. For more information, you can email info@limeworks.org or click here on how to donate.

May your Christmas be filled with the things that question our culture and encourage the truth of this season!

LIME is at a really exciting place! With the new vision in mind and our foundation in place, LIME is happy to announce the very first projects we will be doing and they are both happening in just a few weeks.

Our first project will be partnering with the Long Beach Rescue Mission to serve dinner to some of the homeless and impoverished in the downtown Long Beach area. Before we go to serve, the youth that are helping will spend about an hour learning and reflecting about poverty in our community, and what compassion looks like The group will have about 15 people.

Specifically for Christmas, LIME will be partnering with IC Kidz and Luz y Vida-Norte to assist with their Christmas celebration called, ‘La Posada’. Our role will be funding and distributing Christmas Dinner Boxes to families in need within the community. Each Christmas Dinner Box cost $25 and will feed a family. Our goal is to provide food for 200 families through distributing 200 dinner boxes.

This is where we need your help! If you are interested in purchasing any of our Christmas Dinner Boxes, please send a check made out to LIME and put ‘Christmas Dinner Box’ in the memo. The deadline is December 14th and each box cost $25.

You can mail the check to: 10621 Calle Lee Building 141, Los Alamitos, Ca 90720

Also, we also are inviting youth to join us in helping to distribute these boxes at La Posada on December 17th from 11:00am-4:30pm. We will  begin with a time of getting to know each other and learning at Light & Life Christian Fellowship, 5951 Downey Ave., Long Beach, Ca 90805 and from there walk over to Ramona Park to distribute the boxes. If you know of any youth that may want to participate, please sign up by Thursday, December 15th with Lindsey Walkemeyer-Taylor at lindsey@limeworks.org.

Tis the season to give, and in following the example of Jesus Christ, we want our gift to be one of compassion. Will you join us?

For more information and to download the pdfs with all of the details, go to our current projects page.

46.2 million people in the U.S. are living in poverty.

That is 1 in 7 people.

Of course we must remember and recognize that poverty as defined in the U.S. can still be considered wealth and privilege when comparing it with the realities of poverty in the rest of the world.

However, I do think that in the U.S. because we ascribe poverty mostly (if not always) to other place around the world, we do not realize the great need that is present in our very own country, in our very own local communities.

Urban Ministries of Durham partnered with McKinney, a well-known marketing group also based in Durham, North Carolina to create an interactive, social media based game to bring awareness to the realities that many people in the U.S. face on a day to day basis. The game simulates a real-life situation in which you have 31 days (one month) to survive faced with the pressures of day to day life. To find out more about the actual game, watch this 3 minute video.

Take 5 minutes to try the game out for yourself.

You will probably be surprised at what you learn and experience being placed in the shoes of someone else struggling to make it each month.

Compassion begins with awareness. Take some time to really learn and understand what life is like for numerous people in the U.S.

Take some time to realize that maybe homelessness and poverty really aren’t that far away from anybody.

playspent.org

“It is a liberating thing to realize that our flaws are no obstacle to compassion. These flaws just make us human. Our culture is obsessed with perfection and with hiding problems. But what a liberating thing to realize that our problems, in fact, are probably our richest sources for rising to this ultimate virtue of compassion, towards bringing compassion towards the suffering and joys of others.”

It can be extremely easy and even alluring to assume that our flaws are the bondage keeping us from being great and living well. I am too _________________ (fill in the blank with what you see as your personal ‘flaw’: weak, broken, slow, shy, loud, strange, invisible, boring, afraid, poor, lonely, etc.) to have (or even deserve) a good life–a good life of course to mean a life defined by the in-filling of the Holy Spirit and experienced in the ways that Christ modelled for us through his own life and ministry. One filled with love, community, sacrifice, forgiveness, generosity, freedom, hope, pleasure, kindness, beauty, compassion, and so on.

Quite the contrary.

We are promised that ‘every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good’ (Romans 8:28-The Message).

There may not be concrete answers to all of our hard questions and understanding why things happen the way that they do or why we have had to experience and endure things others haven’t or how we were given this family or why we live in this particular culture and time. However, in those deepest places of pain, brokenness, insecurities and uncertainties, is the very place that Christ meets us and offers an embrace, healing, and an extended hand of compassion.

And in the grace that we receive, we find that there is a great calling and purpose to in turn offer the same embrace, healing, and extended hand of compassion to the world around us, because we understand. We have been there.

Flaws? They are real. But they can be the very place of hope and liberation when entrusted in the hands of the one who can heal, encourage, and speak truth to those flaws; empowering us to live compassionately through them.

Today may you find the strength to face your flaws, the grace to accept Christ’s forgiveness and healing, and the love to extend compassion to those that also may not realize they too have place to live compassionately in spite of our human frailties.

The LIME Board got together this past Friday night to hear about the new vision and transition of LIME and they were everything but bored.

Nothing could have anticipated the amount of energy and excitement that was evident in the room that night as we reflected on the origins of LIME and where we wanted to take it. Creativity birthed ideas that the staff of LIME had not even begun to think of–both for projects and for funding.

How the board responded in this launch meeting really was the determining factor in the life and movement of LIME for the future, and one thing we can all say enthusiastically with conviction is that LIME is going to be around for awhile…and in ways that may surprise you.

LIME just may be on to something…

That’s right…we have fresh LIME for everyone and we are excited to share!

Although LIME has been established for just about 5 years and done quite a few amazing projects in that time, it has fallen short of reaching its full potential due to the lack of focused attention and clarity of vision to direct its movement…until now.

After hiring a new staff member full-time and the work of a collaborative team, we are more excited than ever for the direction that LIME is going, and we think you will be too. LIME is ‘Compassion for the Next Generation’. Our desire is to instill and extend compassion to children and youth locally and globally in a variety of ways (read more about this here). We will partner with existing organizations and non-profits to model and teach the next generation how to be compassionate people while practicing compassion simultaneously.

People have mixed feelings about the potential and character about the next generation, but here at LIME we know that young people are full of untapped abilities, especially being agents of change for good in a hurting and broken world. LIME wants to share opportunities and resource the next generation to do just that.

That’s right…fresh LIME.

Feel free to get involved. We can’t do this alone.