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Project Dignity

serving the homeless with dignity, humility & love

Patience is a Two Way Virtue

Patience is a two way virtue.   You teach it and if you’re lucky, you learn it too.  We experienced it in action last week.  We sat down with the children to do a Father’s Day craft, cleverly orchestrated by the craft lady, “Miss Dawn”.  They decorated funny little sports cars and colored a beautiful Father’s Day card worthy of Hallmark.  I’ve never heard a group of children so silent.  Their total concentration on getting what they were doing absolutely right for their dads was moving.  Bent heads, tongues stuck out between teeth and complete attention to coloring within the lines were the order of the day.

One little boy had a “Magic Marker Malfunction”.   He was almost done with his dad’s card. He was the last child left and we were just about ready to wrap up the session and go home, when the blue magic marker he was using bled all over his masterpiece.  He’s a quiet child so he didn’t make a fuss, but we saw what had happened and asked him if he wanted to start over again.  He said “yes”, so we handed him a clean card and settled in because he is the most meticulous of all the children. We knew we were in for a wait.

We didn’t mind however, because we knew how much that card meant to him.  The front of the card had many, many little details to be covered and he didn’t miss a one.  We figured if he could be that patient, so could we.  It was actually a pleasure to see a young child who was willing to do the work all over again to make sure his daddy had a beautiful card, rather than saying, “Oh forget it. It’s too hard”, or, just slapping some colors on and calling it done.

Sometimes, the activity you have planned doesn’t end at the time prescribed.  Sometimes it shouldn’t. This was one of those times.  What we had to do with our very important lives could wait.  After all, we had a lesson to learn.

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June 15, 2014 /// Filed Under: Matters of the Heart, Working with Children /// Tagged With: children, heart

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A tribute to our Founder

In 1986 doctors told Linda Dunlap she had 6 months to live and she told them the Lord knew more about that than they did. She said He had a lot more work for her to do. She proved herself and God right by living another 22 ministry-packed years.

Linda went into the motels singlehandedly with nothing more than her backpack and a few medical supplies. She won the confidence of people who had never had anyone care about them or help them before. Her belief and vision that one person can make a difference grew into 10,000 people being helped annually by Project Dignity.

Remembering Linda →

More tips like this one

  • Back to School–For Children Only?
  • Patience is a Two Way Virtue
  • Sometimes, Rules have to be Broken
  • When is it Really an Emergency?
  • Don’t try to solve everyone’s problems

What We Do

While we don’t feel anyone can ever fully understand the motel situation, we believe we understand it better than most. To our knowledge we are the only local organization who is focusing their services solely on the homeless population living in residential motels and we’ve been doing it since 1996.

It’s a long haul from homelessness to home, so our programs “wraparound” the challenges. Our first objective is to ease the burdens of daily living for our clients by assisting with necessities most of us take for granted–food, clothing and hygiene items.

Find out more →

More tips like this one

  • Back to School–For Children Only?
  • Patience is a Two Way Virtue
  • Sometimes, Rules have to be Broken
  • When is it Really an Emergency?
  • Don’t try to solve everyone’s problems

Contact us

Got a question? Please feel free to contact us. We’d love to hear from you!

Call us:  714-534-4271

Write us:
Project Dignity
12913 Harbor Blvd., Ste. Q3, #253
Garden Grove, CA 92840

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More tips like this one

  • Back to School–For Children Only?
  • Patience is a Two Way Virtue
  • Sometimes, Rules have to be Broken
  • When is it Really an Emergency?
  • Don’t try to solve everyone’s problems
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