A Little Child Shall Lead Them

Listen to this week’s show A Little Child Shall Lead Them on the  In His Footsteps Radio Show

If an 8 year old, a group of 2nd graders,  and a 10 year old can figure out how to start and grow their service projects from just a good idea to helping hundreds and thousands of people, you could too.

Listen as these amazing young people describe their projects, how they started (with no money or drivers licenses) and what they recommend you do to get started solving the problems in your communities.

Listen to this week’s show A Little Child Shall Lead Them

Scroll for the transcript if you’d rather read than listen, also useful links, pictures and more

Janey Turner During Her First Year of Her Hands For Soldiers Campaign with over 22, 875 donated to Date

John Perino and the Team Lobbies A Restaurant To Donate Used Cooking Oil

One Window Part of the Your Words Matter Campaign by the Sutton Girl Scouts

And Here Are The Sutton Girl Scouts After A Successful Day

Speaker:          Welcome to In His Footsteps with award-winning author Margaret Agard sharing practical tips for living a joy‑filled life and amazing interviews with people who do.  Now here’s Margaret.

Next Speaker: Today I’ll be sharing the secret of success.  The secret of success at work, in your relationships, when you’re facing a problem and more and to help me share that secret I’ll be talking with young children.

Next Speaker: Now here’s this week Bible question and answer brought to you by the amazing Bible Timeline where you can see 6,000 years of Bible and world history together on one color-coded wall poster.  Find out more about the amazing Bible Timeline or ask your own Bible question at amazingbibletimeline.com.

Next Speaker: The Bible question this week is are there triplets in the Bible?  Why would you even ask that?  Wouldn’t you think the Bible would make it clear if there were triplets born?  The Bible proclaims loudly that twins were born, Jacob and Esau, but nothing is said about triplets in the verses in question.  So the two verses that are in question have to do with Noah who lived 500 years and then the Bible says begat **** and then later the Bible says that Tara, the father of Abraham, lived 70 years and begat Abram, Nahor and Haran.  So the question arises, were they all born at the same time?  No, based on other dates, births of other children, looking forward in the Bible we can see that they had to have been born at different times.  So why were they all named together?  Because they were important in the Bible lineage.  Everyone on earth is descended from one of Noah’s three sons.  In the case of Abraham and his brothers, each of his brothers contributed through their descendants’ wives to Abraham’s family and therefore they are important and the descendancy and the lineage of Christ.  So no, there are no triplets in the Bible.  Today we’re gonna be talking about the secret to success.  The secret to success is clear in the Bible, to find yourself you lose yourself in the service of others.  Have you ever noticed that the most successful people in business, in relationships, are the most generous, giving, happy people?  You wonder how they manage to get it all done and still take care of themselves, but they do.  Christ tells us that unless we become like little children we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven and I’ll tell you, after talking to these amazing children and hearing from them today you’re gonna understand what Christ meant.  They have really taught me how to serve.  Jamie, my show is called In His Footsteps and it’s aimed at sharing with people how others are out sharing their time and their talents to make the world a better and happier place and one of the things I want to discuss with you is even a child can do it.  **** I know you’re not a child-child anymore.

Next Speaker: Yeah, I can understand.

Next Speaker: Yeah.

Next Speaker: I was 8  so I technically was a child when I started so.

Next Speaker: Yes, right and that’s the question I had because a lot of people have ideas and even children have ideas, but they’re not quite sure how to start and then a lot of them will do one thing, but somehow you’ve turned it into an ongoing endeavor.  So first why don’t you just start with what was your idea and how you got started?

Next Speaker: All right.  My, when I was 8 years old I went to a school called McKenzie Elementary and they just started a program Adopt a Soldier where they adopted seven soldiers to send packages to and, um, I, that’s where the candy bag went and that’s what I call each little package that I make.  Um, the first seven got a candy bag each.  The idea for the candy bag came from the Halloween bags my mom used to make.  She used to fill hands with, uh, candies and snacks and stuff for Halloween.

Next Speaker: And when you say hands are you talking about those little plastic see –

Next Speaker: Yeah plastic food service gloves.

Next Speaker: Yes, okay, all right, go ahead.

Next Speaker: Right and, um, but yeah that’s where I got the idea for the shape.  So the first seven got those candy bags and I decided I didn’t want the other soldiers to fill left out so I started Hands for Soldiers and, um, mom told me that, um, well you not gonna be able to do it just on your allowance ’cause that’s how I first started.

Next Speaker: Right.

Next Speaker: So I went to talk to my mayor, the mayor of Easley, and he decided to help us out.

Next Speaker: Now how big is Easley?

Next Speaker: Um, how big is Easley?

Next Speaker: How many people, do you know?

Next Speaker: Sorry **** when I said that.  Um, but, um, how big is Easley?  That’s a good question.  It’s smaller than Greenville, but bigger than Pickens.

Next Speaker: Okay and how did you get the appointment?  Whose idea was it to talk to the mayor?  Was that your idea or your mom suggested –

Next Speaker: Yeah, that was my idea.

Next Speaker: Okay.

Next Speaker: Mom thought I would ask, mom thought I’d ask to see grandma, but she’s like you need to find somebody **** and I was like can I talk to the mayor.

Next Speaker: That’s great and so you got an appointment with the mayor and of course he gave you an appointment because who wouldn’t give an appointment to an 8‑year‑old?  Go ahead.

Next Speaker: Right and well I talked to the mayor and he was telling about his time as a soldier and, um, he always was craving Juicy Fruit chewing gum because he couldn’t get it there so that was added to the list and he gave a donation and I was able to continue making care packages.

Next Speaker: Then what happened because next thing I read you started doing booths at places?

Next Speaker: We started attending festivals and setting up a booth, had a simple stand with, um, a display, brochures, a money box and started telling people about our project and they would give donations and then we started, um, we had to put cards on each of the hands, right, and, um, a company was going to make the cards for me, like saying oh, we can, um, copy your handwriting, like print it on all of them and I was like but it wouldn’t be as special.  So we started having the kids draw the cards so each card would be unique and special and they would know that the kids appreciate them and then I would sign it with a message that says thank you for your service, you deserve a big hand, love Janie.

Next Speaker: And how many have you signed?

Next Speaker: How many have I signed?

Next Speaker: Yes.

Next Speaker: Oh gosh, how many mom?  22,875.

Next Speaker: I was, I mean, I’m surprised you don’t have arthritis already.  What do you do, sign that while you’re watching TV or you just –

Next Speaker: I play the computer and write cards.  Like when we were driving the car on a long distance, I write cards.  When I watch TV, I write cards.

Next Speaker: That’s a big part of your life.

Next Speaker: Yeah, pretty much.

Next Speaker: Year round?  Pretty much year round?

Next Speaker: Pretty much year round.  Um, we go by, um, amount of donations.  Like if we have enough money to send boxes we’ll send out a big stack of boxes.  Like we took – let’s see what’s the, the largest amount of boxes taken to the post office at one time was 12 and like –

Next Speaker: You stress that it isn’t just for soldiers.

Next Speaker: Yeah, it’s for anybody in the branch of the military, Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard, anyone that’s serving for our country.

Next Speaker: Okay and do you ever hear back from them?

Next Speaker: Yes, I have, um, let’s see is it seven scrapbooks now or is it, seven scrapbooks full of letters, photos, everything from the soldiers that we’ve received.

Next Speaker: If someone is listening today and they said oh, I’d like to start a project, I have an idea for a project, what would you say?

Next Speaker: Go for it.  Just figure out what you wanna do, how you’re gonna do it and who you’re gonna get to help.  Just don’t think that you’re too young, you’re too old, you’re too tired, you don’t wanna do something like this, but if you really, really want to do something like this just go for it.

Next Speaker: That was Jamie Turner with her Hands for Soldiers project which is actually hands for all the military.  She’s provided over 22,000 personally-signed cards and hands filled with treats for our military.  She makes it sound so easy.  Just do it.  Now we’re gonna talk with Teresa McCourt about a project that her Brownie troop came up with for creating kindness in the Sutton area.  You are one of the co‑leaders of Girl Scout Troop 2387 in Sutton, West Virginia?

Next Speaker: That’s correct.

Next Speaker: Okay and I saw these signs driving into Sutton that was talking about, uh, looked like old Burma Shave signs except exhorting us to be kind, telling us our words mattered.

Next Speaker: Yes.

Next Speaker: Okay.  How did that come about?

Next Speaker: Um, well part of the mantra of Girl Scouts is helping girls, um, to make their world a better place.  You know, helping them discover ways that they can do that and be a part of that and so at the beginning of the school year, um, I work primarily with the Brownie age level which are second and third-graders, about 7 or 8 years old.  Um, I was having a conversation with the girls and asked them how they thought the world could be a better place and one of the girls said if we would talk to each better the world would become better and that’s really the place it came from.  The very beginning was just talking about how they can make the world better and then it went from that to well how can we do that and the girls came up with the idea of going into Sutton and using chalk on the sidewalks and window paint on the storefronts, um, and of course the signs that you saw going into Sutton, writing kind words, compassionate words, loving words, words that the girls thought if adults and the public in general would start using these words instead of some of the ugly words that they use, that their world would actually become a better place and that’s really where it came from.  It was the girls, completely driven by the girls.

Next Speaker: Oh, this is – you know what, I’m gonna go get some pictures.  I actually got pictures of the signs, but I didn’t realize they’d done it on the storefronts and the sidewalks.

Next Speaker: Yeah, well, it had already been cleaned off.  I cleaned it off, um, around the first part of December.  The signs have actually been up for a little while now.

Next Speaker: How do the girls feel about the result of the project?  Do they feel like it made a difference or they just had a good time and now they aren’t talking about it anymore or what?

Next Speaker: No, I mean, we’ve moved on to some other things.  Their focus is still on what they did and I think they really  had a good time doing it, um, and I think they realized just through conversations that it really starts **** talking and if it did nothing else, it at least brought it to adult attention.  At, at the kids’ level, um, they could even see that the way we were talking to each other wasn’t the best way and so if nothing else it started this conversation at the adult level and got us thinking about it and got conversations going and I think the girls were really proud of that impact that they made and I think, you know, they know, they’re realistic.  They know that they’re not going to change everything with some signs in downtown Sutton, but they know that they did their part and that’s the important piece is empowering them and letting them know that, you know, you have an opportunity to be a part of it so that’s what they did.

Next Speaker: And that’s, that’s a perfect example of Girl Scouts in action because it really is about creating leadership in the girls and having them take charge of the projects and come up with the projects on their own.

Next Speaker: Right, yeah.

Next Speaker: This was a perfect, perfect example of that.  I do, and that’s one thing I used to say to my children is as we watch these TV shows they say the horriblest things to each other and then have a laugh track behind it and the person that they said the horrible thing to laughs too like it’s funny and it’s not.

Next Speaker: Right.

Next Speaker: A lot going on in society where people are think it’s okay to say these things and they’re really not so I love what they did.  We’re talking today about how young people, children, lead the way in showing us how we can serve others.  We talked with Jamie Turner who started her project when she was 8.  It’s still going strong while she’s in high school.  Just heard from a Brownie Troop, 7 and 8 year olds in Sutton, West Virginia and now we’ll hear from John Perino who, with a group of friends, started a project when they were in fifth and sixth grade.  John’s gonna tell us now what they did and how they got started.

Next Speaker: All right, well my name is John Perino and I’m from Rhode Island and what I did was I created Project TGIF, Turn Grease Into Fuel, and this is basically an initiative, um, led by students who are in the eighth grade to keep the homes of needy families using recycled waste cooking oil and we started this project in 2008 –

Next Speaker: Wait, wait, wait, let me ask this question.  Do you, do they actually use the cooking oil to heat the home or you get the money from the cooking oil and use that to heat the home?

Next Speaker: Um, basically once the cooking oil is collected from the restaurants, um, we have it brought to a facility where it’s converted into bio diesel and basically, um, that company sells the bio diesel and that money they use to buy bio diesel credits for the charities and basically we just donate the money and they use that to buy bio diesel for the families’ homes.

Next Speaker: Good and how long have you been doing this?

Next Speaker: Um, the project started in 2008 so, uh, 3 years about, yeah.

Next Speaker: And you were –

Next Speaker: Well, four.

Next Speaker: How old were you when you started it?

Next Speaker: I was in fifth grade so I was 10.

Next Speaker: That’s what surprises me John.  How does a 10 year old do that?  What was the first thing you did?  What was the first thing you thought and how did you get started?

Next Speaker: Um, well it actually got started when I read an article in the local newspaper and it was about, um, The Warm Shelter which is a local charity and they were running a campaign to raise money for heating assistance and at the time I didn’t really know a lot about the economic situation, unemployment and things like that so I did a little bit of research on what the charities were doing and the need for heating assistance and I came across using bio fuel for heating assistance.

Next Speaker: So you found another project that was similar and decided to start one like that in your area?

Next Speaker: Well our project is fairly unique, but, uh, the program the charity was running, they were just collecting monetary donations, um, from the public.

Next Speaker: Okay and then –

Next Speaker: So this project is like one of a kind.

Next Speaker: So how did you come up with the idea to go get the used heating fuel and turn it in or the used cooking oil?  We actually have – I hate to tell you this ’cause we have a diesel car and so we have two 55‑gallon drums of cooking oil sitting in our backyard that has been sitting there for a year while my husband decides how he’s gonna turn that into recycled bio diesel, but yeah anyway we might be better off doing what you’re doing.  So go ahead, tell me, uh, how you figured out the part about collecting the cooking oil and turning that into money.

Next Speaker: Um, a friend of mine whose also on the project, um, she went to actually an expo at the University of Rhode Island and basically, um, she found a local company that were collecting this cooking oil and converting it into bio fuel and they were selling that for profit and, um, we decided that we could kind of incorporate the idea of recycling cooking oil and heating homes into one project.

Next Speaker: Well how did you approach the restaurants?  You know it’s interesting.  There’s all this news maybe in an underground way about people who are using bio diesel and you would think that by now restaurants would be charging for their waste oil, but they actually seem to be pretty grateful that someone’s willing to come and take it away.  So how does that work?

Next Speaker: Um, we have the restaurants, some of them do get paid, some of them pay to have their oil taken away, um, but what we did, um, we actually have a friend who works at a popular or actually owns a popular, um, restaurant here in town and so he was the first restaurant that we signed up because we were like, at the time we were fifth graders and it’s kind of, um, hard to sign up restaurants that you don’t know.  When you have a group of kids coming in saying we want your waste cooking oil, you know, it’s not necessarily normal.  Um, so we basically had this friend who was the first to donate his oil and he gave us contacts for other restaurants and from there it just kind of snowballed and grew.

Next Speaker: But John, that really is the way you do anything.  You start with who you know and then they introduce you to other people.  That is good procedure in any age of your life.  Now I’m assuming that none of you drive.

Next Speaker: Yeah, that’s correct.

Next Speaker: Okay, so how do you get the cooking oil from the restaurant to the recycle place?

Next Speaker: Um, actually the same company that does the recycling also does the collecting so they come around with their big, um, 1,000‑gallon tank and collect the oil with their truck.

Next Speaker: So you’re the middle man in a sense.  You go out and you get the restaurant signed up for it and you let the recycle company know and they go collect it, turn it into bio diesel and they credit you with a certain amount of profit?  Is that what happens?

Next Speaker: Precisely.  Um, yeah, we are pretty much the brains of the operation.  We kind of look at all the finances and organize the whole thing, but we do have companies that do the collecting, converting and the distributing, um, but we actually  have an agreement with the refiner and from the, uh, profits that they get we keep 20 percent and that 20 percent is the portion that goes to charity.

Next Speaker: Okay and is there – and none of the restaurants at this point are asking to be paid.  Are you getting all donated?

Next Speaker: Yeah, um, we don’t charge the restaurants anything to donate their waste cooking oil.

Next Speaker: Okay.

Next Speaker: Um, but yeah, unfortunately, um, we are losing some business because people, you know, the times can be hard and people do need the money from selling their waste cooking oil.

Next Speaker: Oh so some of them can make money, but others – you can write that off as a, as a tax credit.  Of course if you’re not making much money you don’t need much tax credit, but still it’s a nice thing to do.  Well, so John how many people have you been able to help?

Next Speaker: Um, we’ve actually donated about $54,000.00 worth of bio heat, um, which equates to about 14,400 gallons and this has actually been used to heat the homes of 144 families.

Next Speaker: This is something wonderful, John, and what have you learned from doing it?

Next Speaker: Um, really what I’ve learned is that, um, it may not seem like it, but it doesn’t take a lot to help a lot, um, meaning we were just a group of fifth graders who had this idea, who had the time, who wanted to help and three years later we’ve helped heat the homes of 144 families and it proves that just a little bit.  We set aside a few hours every week and it goes a huge way.

Next Speaker: Thanks John.  Is there something you wanna say to, we’ll call it the youth of Summersville, West Virginia, about anything you haven’t said yet that you wanna say?

Next Speaker: Um, what I would say is to get started.  It’s really easy to, uh, set up a system of just collecting, converting and distributing.  Um, all you have to do is just contact the charities, contact the refiners and, um, from there it’s just signing up restaurants and, you know, it really falls into place really nicely and it’s quite a wonderful project.

Next Speaker: Thanks John.  They make it sound so easy don’t they?  Jamie Turner said well just get started and John says the same thing, just get started.  No wonder Christ tells us that we need to become like little children.  I have to wonder why we’re not as adults just getting started.  What did we learn today?  If little children can serve, we all can serve.  Service is the secret to success.  Little children do not have money, they do not have skills, they do not have transportation.  These children just had a desire and they showed us something else.  The way to truly serve is to reach out and involve other people who might have those skills, that time, that transportation.  They became the idea generators and as they said it only takes a few hours a week to make a huge difference in your own community.  Could I close the program today with a song called His Hands, coming full circle and the music and lyrics are by Kenneth Copeland and it’s from the album Greater Than Us All.  His Hands.  That was His Hands from the album Greater Than Us All, music and lyrics by Kenneth Copeland.  Next week we’ll be talking with Myra Dolan.  Join us next week as Myra shares how she was able to bless others with a talent she didn’t even have.

Next Speaker: You can find out more about how to have the joy that comes from living each day for God while still keeping up with daily life in the book In His Footsteps, I Gave My ToDo List To God available at the web site https://inhisfootsteps.com or online at amazon.com.

Next Speaker: You can get more information on our guests and our discussion today including replays of this show at inhisfootsteps.com.  Thanks for joining us today.  I’m Margaret Agard.  You can reach me at P.O. Box 52 Fort McCoy, FL 32134 or through my web site inhisfootsteps.com.  I’m looking forward to hearing from you.  Be sure to join us next week for more practical tips on living a God-directed life and amazing interviews with people who do.

More Information

Read More About and Support The Turn Grease Into Fuel Project

Get Your Child Involved In Girl Scouts