400 shirts, 15 gallons of dye, thousands of rubber bands, and a great day. On June 4, my fmaily and I joined a group exchangers and crashed the Special Olympics at ISU. We gathered in the arts tent and took instructions from our fearless tie-dye shirt instructor, mixed the dye, soaked the shirts, gloved up, and waited. Then they came. Hundreds of special Olympians and their coaches. Smiles on their faces, many of them showing us their medals.They came by for a hands-on experience of making a free shirt of their choice. We were cranking out these shirts for about 4 hours. About hour 3 as we were moving like a well-oiled machine, folding and rubber banding and helping them color the shirts, I noticed something weird. My back was hurting, my legs tired, my hands stained, my cuts burning from the chemicals, and my face; smiling. I hadn’t smiled a lot that week – it had been a busy week with a set of challenges, but here I was, smiling. It reminded me of what I had journaled on earlier in the week. “A generous man will prosper. He who refreshes others will be refreshed.” – Proverbs 11:25. With the completion of almost every shirt we would open it up, clap and cheer, and the athletes would smile – refreshed, and we would smile – refreshed.
