RibFest
This week-end is the RibFest in Naperville. It is a huge festival, with games and carnival rides and concerts, where different restaurants come and sell ribs, sort of like Taste of Chicago but smaller and with better bands. It’s a fundraiser for child abuse prevention. Community Christian Church (CCC) partners with the event co-ordinators by running a “Child ID” service. Here’s how it works:
We have a booth at each entrance. Members of CCC volunteer to man them for four-hour shifts during RibFest. Each child’s parent fills out a card for them with the parents’ contact information, their names, and the child’s name and age. We give the child a wrist band with a number on it. The parent gets a tab with the same number on it. We also write the number on the child’s card. When we give the child their wristbad, we also give them a free water bottle with the logo from our childrens’ ministry on it. We tell the parents that if they should become separated from their child, then they should go to the information tent in the middle of the grounds with the big flashing yellow light on top, where the policemen and the medics are set up, because when we find a lost child that is where we will bring them.
A bunch of the other interns and I all volunteered last night: myself, Tammy, Donnie, Ellen, and Echo. It was so much fun talking to the kids, especially the little ones who had just learned their colors. (”What’s your name? Olivia? That’s a beautiful name! My name is Melissa. I think you must be Princess Olivia, just like the Disney Princesses on your shirt. I have a pretty bracelet for you to wear, Princess Olivia. Do you like it? Yeah? What color is the bracelet? Yes, it’s orange! Now what color is my t-shirt? That’s right, it’s yellow! Now I have something else for you too. Here’s a water bottle. Do you see the picture on your waterbottle? Now look at the back of my shirt. The pictures match, don’t they! Now, if you were to get lost somehow, and you can’t see the adult you are supposed to be with, do you know what you should do? You should find somebody wearing a yellow t-shirt just like mine, with a goofy purple symbol up in the corner and a picture on the back that matches your waterbottle. OK? Great! Give me five, Princess Olivia! Have fun tonight! Be safe!”)
The kids were great, the food was great, the music was great– Lynyrd Skynyrd was the headliner!!! But my favorite part of the whole evening was when a little girl named Elizabeth, who was about nine years old, came up to me with big sad eyes and said, in a voice so quiet you could barely hear her over the noise of the carnival, “Um, excuse me, I’m lost.” I said, “Hi, what’s your name?” Her name was Elizabeth. “I’m so glad you came and told me, Elizabeth!” I said. “My name is Melissa. You stay right here with me and hold my hand. In a minute we’ll go up to the information booth together to wait for your parents.” (The rule is that whomever finds the child stays with them the whole time.)
So Elizabeth and I sat at the Information booth together and drank water for about thirty minutes, and I talked away a mile a minute, asking her questions about school and her family and her favorite books and movies and the vacation her family went on last summer and whatever I could think of in order to keep her mind busy so she didn’t get scared. She was so shy! And then I saw a man pushing through the enormous crowd of wildly-dressed Lynyrd Skynyrd fans that were sitting on the grass and milling about, walking hurriedly towards the tent and tightly holding the hands of two other little girls in dresses that matched Elizabeth’s dress. “Look who’s here!” I said. Her face when she turned around and saw her dad was absolutely priceless. Her dad came up and gave her a huge hug and didn’t yell a bit, he just asked her if she was ok, and then asked me how we found her, and told her that she had done exactly right. He was so happy to see his little girl!
And it came into my head all at once that all of us are lost little children, and Jesus has the tab in his pocket that has the number on it that matches the number on our wristband– our own wristband, that has a different number on it from anyone elses’ wristband– and he rushed to the tent to claim us, pushing through the jeering crowd standing in his way, not letting anything, not even a cross, stand between him and claiming us, his lost little children, from the information tent. I almost bawled then and there, especially when little Elizabeth’s Dad said to me, before they went on their way, “The blessings of God are on you guys for keeping our kids safe.”
We once were lost, but now are found. May all of our lives continue to help lost people find their way back to God.
