Just Married and Generous

Dear Feed My Starving Children,

I am writing to share with you a decision our daughter and her new husband (as of July 28!) made while planning their wedding.

Jillian and Christopher were married two months ago on July 28th at an outdoor wedding celebration held at a local farm near our home. While planning the wedding with us, the couple was deeply impacted by a sermon series on generosity taught by our pastor Dr. James L. Nicodem at Christ Community Church (St. Charles, IL). They were also participating in a financial stewardship small group, and the theme of generosity and giving out of one’s first fruits was being reinforced to them.

Thus, they approached my husband and I a couple months into the wedding planning and asked what we thought about doing something different during the reception. They wanted to begin their married life with an act of intentional generosity–to establish right from the start the discipline of saying no to themselves so that they could give more generously to others. The idea was to take the amount they would have spent on a wedding cake and donate it to FMSC instead, forgoing the traditional wedding cake at the reception. Both of them have packed meals for FMSC in Aurora through our church.

Jillian and Chris shared this decision with their guests after dinner had been served, at the time when the couple might traditionally cut the cake. We could see this touched many of our guests (and the farm staff as well)–especially when everyone understood how many meals would be packed for hungry children–and all the guests seemed quite willing to skip dessert and move right into a fun time of dancing and celebrating.

We share with the hope that this story of God moving in the hearts of this young couple will encourage you! Many of the guests at the wedding had packed meals at FMSC before, including some young high school students who were mentored by Jillian and Chris over the previous year in student ministries.

Our prayer is that God will multiply this gift many times over–just like He did with the loaves and fishes! We all look forward to packing many more meals with FMSC in the years ahead.

God bless you!
Lisa Heidlauf (mom of Jillian and mom-in-law of Chris Carmichael)