This past spring I was incredibly fortunate to coach a local T-Ball team in Mira Mesa.  The Little Rascals were made up of boys and girls ranging from 3 to 5 years old.    Having the privilege of showing the kids the basic fundamentals of T-Ball/Baseball through practice and games made for some great experiences.  Seeing the growth of the kids just standing around on a baseball f

Over the weekend, my family and I volunteered for an organization called Harvest CROPS. Residential owners of fruit trees register their trees with Harvest CROPS and allow volunteers to come at a scheduled time and date to pick the fruit. The owners donate the fruit, volunteers help harvest the fruit, and Harvest CROPS makes the fruit available to low income families and seniors who otherwise have limited access to fresh fruits.

Little league baseball is an organization that is designed to build good citizens, good leaders, and to prepare today’s youth to be tomorrow’s leaders.  Although it may seem like it is kids simply running around, having fun, baseball is much more than that.  It teaches them how to be good listeners, teammates, and friends. 

My son started Kindergarten this year, and a couple of Fridays each month I volunteer to help his teacher with various tasks. The teachers and the school rely heavily on parent volunteers. The school even has a dedicated Parent Helper room with work stations, copy machines, paper trimmers and other supplies. Some examples of what I have been tasked with as a parent volunteer are putting together folders for the students’ reading logs and labeling their Word Journals. On another occasion, I sat with students individually and helped them finish their projects.

Each year, my church hosts a week of Vacation Bible School, which provides kids with the opportunity to learn, have fun, and meet new friends. I spent an afternoon helping fellow members decorate the church and prepare materials. I mostly helped to set up the “Science Center” where the kids would build things and participate in experiments.

For my second volunteer activity this year I helped organize and run a week long summer camp for the 12-18 year old girls at my church.  These annual camps (called Girls' Camp across the US) have been held for as long as anyone can remember, and are a highlight for the girls who participate in our teen program.  This is my third year being involved as a leader, and I of course attended these camps as a teenager myself, though I do have to point out that the girls today have it pretty easy with their cabins, electricity, and a/c compared to our tents, bugs, and pit toilets ;)  The camp was h

Every year, I try to raise awareness for CF and that is typically accomplished by raising money followed by a walk or a bike ride.  Last year it was pretty easy, we walked 3 miles in Mission Beach, CA.  The year before I biked 90 miles through North County San Diego.  Either way, no matter what, my goal is to help raise awareness as well as money to find a cure and to help other families with CF. 

For my first volunteer activity this year I chose to volunteer with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Out of the Darkness Overnight Walk, held in downtown San Diego on May 20th.

On February 12, 2017, I had the opportunity to help out with a multi-church effort to provide meals to some of the members of the homeless community in Downtown San Diego. I assisted with preparation before the event began. We sang songs, prayed, and then began serving. My job was to collect trays as people were leaving. This allowed me the privilege of seeing their happy faces as they finished up their meals and thanked us. Seeing the appreciation that they showed was a very memorable and rewarding experience.

My wife and I volunteered to cleanup a park/watershed area up in Temecula, while out our group also had collected a few blankets and bought some coffee to pass out to some of the homeless community that lives in the area we were cleaning up. The creek/river area goes under the freeway and really gets trashed by people who are careless or just don’t care about the animals and as I found out people who call it home. While not something that really hits home it seemed like an opportunity for me to help cleanup from the careless people who commute right alongside me every day.