Frachele Scott, Site Manager at Historic Stagville, talks about their work to connect Durham's history with its current generation.

We had a great time today heading out to Market Street in Downtown Durham and handing out some very tasty Locopops to about 125 neighbors!!  If you haven't tried them yet you should, and even more you should know that Summer and Connie who own the place are all about Durham.

We'll plan more events like this so you can meet your neighbors in Durham, check out a cool local business that loves Durham, and meet us here at DurhamCares and learn a bit more about what we do.  Fan us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on the 4-1-1.

What should be next? Free taco from Guajillo's? Free pastry from Daisy Cakes? Free Only Burger? Send your favorite suggestions our way! Thanks Connie and Summer and Locopops for a great afternoon!

Greetings people. I am Lauren Wishon, the volunteer Volunteer Corrdinator this summer with DurhamCares. For most of my life I have lived with my family of Mom, Dad, older brother and sister, in North Raleigh. I went to Broughton High school and when it came time to chose a college I was determined to get out and spread my wings. Naturally I attended NC State University : ) I was not so happy about that decision at first, although it made sense, but God has challenged me and stretched me right here at home, and I have loved it! I have grown to love the triangle area and their ain't no shame in staying close to home (as long as you travel sometimes because the rest of the country...world, is pretty amazing too!)

I just graduated from NCSU in May with a BA in Political Science-International Politics and a minor in Middle Eastern Studies. Now I know this doesn't initially make sense considering I am currently a volunteer coordinator for a local Durham organization helping the community here. And to that I would have to say that focusing on international (especially Middle Eastern) issues during college has helped me understand that while I have a passion to serve the Middle East my community has many of the same issues, struggles, and needs. I was confused at first too: what would my purpose be in Durham? Being at DurhamCares and around the amazing people here I have come to love the simple commandment: Love Your Neighbor. And it isn't less gratifying, less interesting, or less important to serve the person in your back yard vs. the one over seas. They are all our neighbors!

I am grateful that I ended up at DurhamCares after seeking a job at a few places. Heather mentioned that I could volunteer and I thought why not- this place sounds pretty amazing. Needless to say, I plan on being here as long as possible! I grow more and more obsessed with what I do here every day. I work with the volunteer matching program that matches people's skills, passions, and interests to the communities needs in the form of long-term volunteer opportunities. That means there are two pieces to my job. First, I get to communicate with people that are willing and excited about volunteering in the community. They (you?) fill out the registration online and then we get to talk on the phone and I hear more about them. Then I go and search for a perfect match for their preferences, availability, passions, talents, etc. That leads me to the second part: networking with local not for profits to find out, and sometimes help them define, their needs. Many times they are used to talking about short-term opportunities that they are surprised when we ask: "If you had all the money in the world to hire staff members, what would those jobs look like". It is awesome to see a light go off when we say that and suddenly they give an eager description of volunteer opportunities that can strategically help them run and improve the organization! These jobs are SO varying for the many organizations we have built with relationships thus far. It has been difficult at times to meet and get to know all these amazing organizations and not be able to help them then and there myself, or find them all the volunteers they need, right away! So I say all this to hopefully help you blog readers to see that this isn't your typical volunteering and you have a chance to make a huge difference for your neighbor and see your impact : ) Do it! Love your neighbor! Volunteer!

I've been back for a couple of days from my trip to Nicaragua, and I've now absorbed enough to be able to share some thoughts, including my biggest takeaway.

First, some background. David (my business partner, great friend and co-founder of DurhamCares) and I had wanted to get away to celebrate his 40th birthday. The original plan was to go see the Tour de France for a few days as we've done in the past (we're both avid cyclists). Lance Armstrong was back and in a 3 day trip we could take in the individual Time Trial in Annecy, which for my money is the prettiest town in Europe, and see the epic stage 2 days later at the top of Mont Ventoux. It sounded cool and we were ready to go. It occurred to us, though, that this might not be the best thing to do. You see for years we've been talking at the company about how our personal and company values are: Faith, Family, Work and Fitness (in that order). Shouldn't we celebrate his birthday in a way that was more in line with that? Don't get me wrong, quick R&R trips to go skiing and/or cycling are great and we'll do more of them, but this occasion was really special and we wanted to memorialize it in a way that was something that we'd never forget. So, we decided on a 4 day trip to Nicaragua with our sons (Daniel age 9, and Benjamin age 7). We also asked along our great friend Scott Toal, who went to ORU with David and the Chairman of the Mailbox Club and his son Seamus (age 8).

Our trip was AWESOME! The first two days were in Managua principally to visit ministries and a Micro Finance Institution. The next two days were in San Juan del Sur down on the coast for fishing and surfing. Pictures from the trip and captions describing what we did are at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=136611&id=573895140

I won't tell you all of the details of the trip as there is much that we've put in the captions on fbook, but I do want to share some highlights:

1. Visiting the Lirio de Las Valles, a church that sits 200 passionate believers that couldn't have cost more than $1,000 to build. As I tweeted from the visit, "now this is a capital campaign that I can support."
2. Normally quiet and reserved Benjamin standing up in front of the crowd sharing his love of the Lord...it blew me away that he said one word, let alone what amounted to a full blown testimonial. All things are possible with the Holy Spirit!
3. Seeing lacrosse and hope in the slums of La Chureca, a slum at the Managua city dump. (For an awesome 14 minute video on how it got there, check out the video at: http://lacrossethenations.org/)
4. Touring the dump and the ministries inside it with our new friends Brad Corrigan (of the band Dispatch) and Daniel Bain.
5. Other surfers at the Remonsa beach clapping for Benjamin as he surfed. There IS something soulful about surfing. Btw, check out the movie "Walking on Water" if you haven't already.
6. The many, many unsolicited hugs that I got from Benjamin. I bet that I've gotten 10-15 from him up until the trip. I got more than 20 on it. AWESOME.
7. Great bonding with the other dad-son combinations.
8. Benjamin leading us through a slide show upon our return, getting to the picture of the church with all of the kids in it, and JoeJoe (our 5 year old son) exclaiming, "Wow, that's a beautiful church!".....AND IT WAS! Not for the building, but for the balloons hanging from the rafters and the beautiful children inside of it. It was Matthew 18:3 applied better than I've ever known.
9. Hundreds of other things that I won't throw at you now...I'll just wrap them all into an encouragement for you to do the same. It wasn't too expensive, about $2,000 for 5 days incl. airfare, and it was wonderful to see other ministries that we might get involved with, and it's a life experience that we'll all NEVER forget!

Now, for the application to Durham:

The second part of our trip was to a town on the coast named San Juan del Sur. It has a population of about 3,000 people and is beautifully located along some of the most dramatic coastline I've ever seen. But that's not what impressed us. What impressed us was the incredible sense of community that we felt while we were there. I've been to other surf towns in Central America and elsewhere around the world. Unfortunately, they're typically known for their night clubs, public consumption of alcohol, men trying to sell you pot, and women trying to sell something else. NOT HERE. At night, the entire town came out to walk as families around the town and to visit each other on porch stoops. Children played in the streets without a fear in the world; neither them NOR their parents. The sense of it all was overwhelming. We couldn't help but feel that this is the way that every town should be...the way that we envision towns long ago were in America before television and the Wii.

Nicaragua is the 2nd poorest country in Latin America, and yet for my money it is the richest I've ever seen. Happiness in San Juan del Sur is not measured by financial success, material belongings or academic credentials (they don't have any). What they do have is a love for family, a commitment to engagement and relationship and faith. I would go so far as to say that the average person in San Juan del Sur is significantly happier than the average person in Hope Valley, Chancellor's Ridge, NE Central Durham or any other community here in Durham.

Here's my hope for Durham: that we put down the computer, the TV and the video games long enough to discover our neighbors, engage with them, learn about them, build relationally with them, and yes to love them. If you want to see what it might look like some day, go check out San Juan del Sur and tell me if you've got anything of real substance on them; are they citizens of the 2nd poorest country in the world, or are they actually residents of the richest town in the world? And you can get in some great surfing and fishing while you're at it.