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I was surprised when I received a $100 bill in Church. I am usually "game" for anything, and figured that it would be a fun assignment. An obvious starting place for me in determining how to spend the money was to involve the Cub Scouts. I am not sure what came first, but around the same time as the $100 challenge, I received a call from the Church asking if our Pack could help clean the cemetery. I thought that this outlet would be rewarding to the Scouts, and be a prudent use of the $100. I thought this was a good use of the money on two levels. First, we probably saved the Church at least $500 to have the cemetery cleaned by a service. We took $100 and turned it into $500 worth of benefit. On a second level, we were teaching Cub Scouts reverence for the cemetery and the value of community service. These things were both good and quite rewarding.
21 Cub Scouts, along with Leaders and Parents, pulled 70 bags of trash out of the cemetery. The immediate improvement in the appearance was quite remarkable. We spent about $20 on bags, but Cub Scouts don't work for free. They work cheap, but not for free. We purchased patches (remaining funds) for all the Cub Scouts and Uniformed Leaders as part of Scouting's "Good Turn for America" program. We proudly presented them at our Pack Meeting. At this point, I figured we were done - spent the $100, saved $500, built-up some Cub Scouts. Neat, clean, done.
I missed the point. I was surprised by a third level of benefit. When my wife and I attended Tiffany Santiago's funeral, the cemetery was clean. With everything else going on, with thoughts and emotions running rampant, the cemetery was clean. When people come to honor their love ones by visiting their gravesites, maybe they will realize that somebody cares enough to clean the cemetery. Or maybe they don't think of it, and at least there are no distractions caused by unsightly litter. Either way, in a small way, we helped people during a trying time.
In my opinion, we used the $100 to advance the Kingdom of God. It may seem like all we did was pick up trash, but I believe we did so much more.
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