Quiet Obedience.

It was a big weekend, and we have a Summer Reading Giveaway!

Jun 07, 2023

This weekend was a big weekend. We had the homeschool conference here in The Woodlands, and Brave Books hosted a story hour with Kirk Cameron in Missouri City. Missouri City is reallyy far away by the way. I think I hit my seventh toll road, looked at my daughter and announced that we should have taken a plane. We did arrive, however, in enough time to get in line and make it into the event.

Mr. Cameron talked to the parents a little about why he and the Brave team are doing these story hours, and he impressed on us that he is only doing a small part. He encouraged us to also consider what each of us could be doing in our communities. I don’t remember exactly what he said, and I hope I didn’t just flub it, but that was the gist.

This got me to thinking about a story that is told in orphan care called the Starfish Story. I’m sure you can find a better version on the internet, but basically a boy is walking down the beach, which is covered in starfish, and he is throwing them back into the sea one by one. A man walks up to the boy and says, “What are you doing? There are thousands of starfish on the beach, you can’t possibly make a difference.” The boy looks up at the man, picks up a starfish, throws it in and says, “I made a difference for this one.”

The point of this story is that often when people begin to work in orphan care ministry, they are overwhelmed by the need and decide to do everything or nothing. Those who do everything get burned out and eventually may do nothing. You need to pray over what your starfish is and be faithful to the Lord in obedience with the task He has given you.

This is how it is with everything else in life. Right now, our community is struggling under demonic influence. The situation looks bleak. We all must do our part. Some are called to big things, but most of us are being asked to be faithful in the mundane. We walk humbly. We pray. We might volunteer for a non-profit. We visit our libraries and request good books, also checking out good books. We have conversations with neighbors and friends speaking honestly and in love and also listening and learning. We call our congressman or school board members and write letters. We teach our children our values, training them up in the Lord.

This is hard because we are busy with jobs, kids, homework, or possibly homeschooling. Unfortunately, there is a spiritual battle raging on, and our kids are being targeted. We all need to find our starfish, our ministry. What seemingly little things are we being called to that we can walk out in obedience?

Giveaway/ awareness campaign:

This summer we have a social media campaign to bring awareness to the Brave Books and Christian books in our libraries and to get Christians and conservatives BACK INTO the libraries.

Here are the details:

Check out a book, take a picture with it and share it on social media with hashtag #BraveReader and tag us, if possible, with something like, “Look what I found at the library here in Conroe!” (Obviously use the name of your town or library.)

Here is an example:

We will do a drawing in August and every point is an entry:

2 points for every post with the hashtag.

3 points for every new library card sign up! (This is incentive to go to the library if you’ve never been!)

1 point for every time you check out a book. Just send us a picture. You don’t have to post every time. Please only send pictures you don’t mind being posted on our page. We plan to post some throughout the summer. If you don’t want your kids being posted, just take a picture of the book, or take a picture from behind your kids reading or something like that.

What social media posts count? Any social media post counts, even if it’s private. Just send us a screenshot. (We will keep all screenshots private.) You can post on your private facebook page, a private group, signal, Instagram, you could even text or email a few friends and that counts!

What books count? Any Christian or conservative book counts! Check our master list for all our newest books and the existing books we found. Also, please see printable book list links at the bottom of this post.

What if I don’t live in Montgomery County? If you live in a surrounding county, you can come and read the books and that will count. Make sure not to reshelve them because the librarians count the books left for reshelving as checkouts. If you live in Harris County, you should be able to check out these books as our counties have a sharing agreement.

This should be fun, and we hope will bring awareness to the books for Christian and conservative families!

The Prizes:

Thank you to Karly at Sandy Creek Mercantile for sponsoring this Awareness Campaign Giveaway! Karly provided all of the matchbox cars, action figures (so perfect), nature discovery buckets and a patriotic t-shirt. You can find out about her amazing local business on her Instagram here or Facebook Page here. Thank you again Karly for your generosity! The kids are going to love these baskets!

We will have at least 5 gift baskets (possibly more, stay tuned) with books and toys. We have additional toys to add to the baskets before we hand them out. We will contact each winner and find out how many girls and boys are in each family and distribute the extra toys into the baskets based on family dynamics. For each winner, we hope there will be something for all of your kids in each basket. We have a few things to add, but this is what we have so far: