Praisin' Yahweh: Give a Day ... Get A Whole Lot More

Last December my family and I heard about Disney's "Give a Day, Get a Day" promotion, and we could not wait to sign up in January when the program officially started. We logged in the day it started and found the perfect place to volunteer, Dreamchaser Horse and Rescue in New River, Arizona. I was raised with horses, and absolutely love them. (If I could pass one off as a rather large dog with our HOA, I would have one grazing in my backyard right now.) To be able to help these amazing people who rescue neglected and abused horses and get free tickets to Disney? It was an amazing opportunity. Those of you that know me, know that I am an honest person and that I have been fairly transparent on this blog ... today is no exception. The main reason that we signed up to help was the free tickets. My youngest daughter has never been to Disney, the tickets are really too expensive for us in this day and age, and this was a way to go for free. It sounds shallow, but it is truth ... although not the whole truth in the end. Before I explain what I mean by that, I would like to share the experience of our day with you.

Yesterday was our "day" of service. (Clarification, at this particular site the volunteer time slot is from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. - 4 hours ... hardly a "day" in the literal sense of the word.) We got up early (5:30 a.m.) and headed out to New River. It was still a bit dark when we left the house at 6:30, but we were in for a beautiful sunrise. Splashes of pick and purple highlighted the horizon as the sun began its ascent into the cloud strewn sky. Driving through the open desert, everything was in sillouette and so very peaceful. Admiring the stillness was a great way to spend the time it took to get there.

When we arrived in New River, we were surprised by the lack of paved roads. Choosing the more green option, New River has ecomonically thrifty dirt roads that are rather bumpy and make one feel a little as if they are going off-roading. The first thing that Jillian noticed was old fashioned mailboxes pictured on the left. When she saw them, she asked: "Mommy, are they having a mailbox sale?" I responded, "Why do you ask that?" To which she replied, "Well, they have a table full of mailboxes over there." We could not help but giggle, as I explained that all mailboxes used to be like these.

The next thing we noticed was the amazing way that the morning light played upon the surrounding landscape, and just how green it was ... thanks to all the rain that we have been having in the last month or two. There is just something magical about the golden hue that the morning sun bathes all creation in. In the birth of a new day the color of everything just seems more vibrant, more alive. To my gain, Google maps had sent us in the wrong direction, and while Pat was trying to figure out just where we went wrong and how to get where we needed to be ... I jumped out and tried to capture the amazing light with my camera. Soon after, Pat decided that the best thing to do was to turn around and head back to the first main street that we had been on and start over. It was getting close to 8:00 and we had precious few moments to loose.

After a little backtracking, we happened to notice a small sign on the side of the road that declared (in small letters) that Dreamchaser Rescue was right down the road. (Not the road that Google maps had listed, but the right road nonetheless!) We arrived with just seconds to spare, parked our car, and jumped out into the .... mud. Acres and acres of the wet, dirty, sink in to your ankle kind of mud. It did not take but a moment to take the jump into the full realization that we were in for one wet muddy day ... full of dirt ... water ... and poop. Looking at all the stalls, we knew that mucking stalls was in our future ... with all the muck multiplied by 100 from all of the recent rain. Looking down at our white tennis shoes, we also knew that we would be most likely going shoe shopping in the near future.

We spent the 4 hours there split between two jobs. First, we were introduced to the most interesting rakes that I have ever seen ... and the wettest stalls that I had ever seen. We raked ... we shoveled ... we scooped ... we pushed ... and we dumped our offering of manure onto the biggest pile of manure I have ever seen. Have you seen the shows where they have the trash collection bins delivered to houses that are being completely rehauled? The ones that take up a complete driveway? The ones that are just shorter than a semi? Well there were two of them, and they were absolutely full of manure! Let's just say that we are so grateful that we did our time before fly season!

The second half of the day, we spent our time digging up large rocks out of a large grassy area and dumping them around the outside of the field to make "a wall." After about an hour of rock detail we decided that we would actually prefer the dirty, dredges of pasture poop detail to the boring, monotonousness of rock detail. At least in the pastures and corrals there were horses to pet and visit with. (We tried that with one of the larger boulders we moved, but it was just not the same.)

Four hours later, we were finished, sore, and really muddy. My youngest managed to fall into the most disgusting puddle of yellowish liquid ... I almost got run over by a jealous horse ... and our shoes are now brown. I am not sure there is enough bleach in the whole industrialized part of the world to make them white again. I have thought about contacting the makers of Oxyclean and asking them if they would like to purchase them to use in their next infomercial ... they would make a fortune if they could get them back to white. I personally would buy a life time supply. We did finish the wall, the stalls were clean ... until they remade the mess just as we walked away ... and we did earn our tickets to Disney. There is one thing, however, that happened that I was not expecting. Both of my children, even though covered in mud and whatever else, unanimously agreed that they wanted to come back to Dreamcatcher again and volunteer their time ... even though there would be no more Disney Tickets, no pay out, and no earthly reward. That was perhaps the biggest perk of our Give a Day, Get a Day experience ... my children found within them hearts that want to serve ... just to serve.

Some Additional Pictures