There is nothing like a three hour CPR & First Aid course to remind me how much I can forget. Enlisting the help of the fabulous trainers of First Response, we offered a class last Sunday. I’d used these folks before and their trainers are thorough, funny, talk a mile a minute, and use 80’s tunes like the BeeGee’s Staying Alive and Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive to help us keep a steady beat of compressions.

I booked the First Response folks last May for an October date. I marketed the class inside the church through typical channels (social media, bulletin, newsletter) through August and September. First Response requires a minimum of 12 participants at a very reasonable rate. Knowing we needed to cover a couple of our college student nursery servants, and in case I couldn’t get the minimum, we added a small buffer to the fee we charged.

Two weeks before the class date, we promoted it through other social media channels and to our community on the signs along our roadside. I got two phone calls within a couple of days from a children’s caregiver and a girl scout leader calling to reserve a spot. On Sunday, three others just showed up along with an additional three of our own who were not sure they could make it (so they didn’t reserve a spot ahead of time) and did.

We had a total group of 18 folks from all walks of life, all ages and stages: a grandmother and her granddaughter, two caregivers from a senior adult care facility, our nursery caregivers, our head of trustees and his daughter, a twelve-year old boy scout working his way to Tenderfoot, two high school freshmen who serve in children’s ministry often, two day care workers, a girl scout leader, a mom and her daughter-in-law who serves as a teacher and expecting her second baby in a few months.

In all honesty, for fear of not making the minimum participants, I was sweating it ten days ago. But I was reminded again that we are called to provide an opportunity to do good things, God will do the number crunching and the people gathering. Our job is obedience.

Completely surprised at the community participation of 6 out of 18, I will be scheduling CPR & First Aid training as part of our regular calendar every fall. We will promote it just as much as an outreach to our community as to our own. We extended the gift of Christian hospitality to our neighbors and our own. Our own bumping elbows with our community for three hours…on a Sunday afternoon. My supply list: name tags and iced-down, bottled water.

My very favorite part (other than our youth naming their dummies after characters from The Walking Dead)? Our instructor arrived late due to Atlanta traffic of the last Braves game AND a Falcons home game, so it gave us a chance to share why we were there and get to know one another.  Yeah, I’m doing this every year!

“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:14