Taratories Blog

Stuff the Bus

This week I helped our church create a bus for our annual "Stuff the Bus" school supply and sports equipment collection. My church, Grace Church of Bath, Ohio, joins with our urban partners in helping the kids they serve head back to school fully equipped with school supplies and sports equipment.  It is a great way to make a tangible difference for inner-city kids and it was great to be a small part of making that happen.  We already had a painted wooden cut out for the front of the bus which was used last year.  This year we decided to make the body of the bus to have somewhere to put the items into.  I worked with a couple of other people to make this happen in a couple hours one evening and it went so smoothly!  We arrived at the church with some boxes, paint and some yellow poster board.  We hadn't planned out how this was all going to come together before we got there, but between the three of us it all came together like clockwork!  After formulating a plan, one person spray painted the bottoms of the boxes black to create the look of a dusty road, the other person helped attach yellow posterboard to the boxes and blue paper to the posterboard to make windows.  I painted the whole time creating the bumpers, wheels, and edges to windows, etc. which was so fun for me.  I love projects where I get to do the "cherry on the top" parts!

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The kids had a lot of fun playing in the boxes while we worked and tried out riding the bus when we were finished!  

Here is my little guy with the bus this morning at church.  I'm thinking this would be a good prop for a play or something some day!  I think it was a creative, yet functional, way to collect supplies and I can't wait to see how full this bus gets as it is stuffed with peoples generosity.