11/13/2017
Sunday
Pictured yesterday: Patrick and Rusty on the roofs, and Hollis down below. Together, the three of us operate Lights for Orphans. (Also pictured, our pastor's son and great young man, Jordan.) In addition to running LFO, Patrick is a full-time IT technician for a local municipality, Hollis is an elementary school teacher, and Rusty owns and operates Step By Step Moving & Delivery, LLC.
We thought we'd take a few minutes to give a little history about our operation and our heart.
Lights for Orphans began in 2008 when Patrick's wife offered his assistance to a couple friends, single moms, who needed help putting up their lights. Patrick called Hollis for some help and we got it done, feeling pretty good about our work. The following year, we were getting ready to go on a mission trip to Honduras to work on a project called Promise Home Orphanage. Hollis had the idea to offer our services in exchange for donations to fund our trips to Honduras and thus, Lights for Orphans was born.
A couple years later, a friend of ours, Andy, interested in being part of what we were doing came on board and brought a wealth of business expertise with some fresh ideas which enabled us to grow exponentially. We partnered with a local landscaping company owned by a mutual friend of ours (Lindy's Lawns) to help staff our installations because it became more than the three of us were able to keep up with completely on our own.
After several seasons of continued growth and success, Andy parted ways thanks to the blessing of a new job which required his full attention. We are grateful to this day for his remarkable contributions to what this became.
Last year, in need of some help Hollis and Patrick asked our good friend Rusty, who had experience with other installation operations, to join up with us to help us out with the workload. Rusty is an awesome guy with fantastic customer service and a great attitude.
Together, the three of us run this thing. In addition to our full-time jobs and our families. Sometimes we're slow to respond to emails and voicemails (read: excessively slow). It's not an excuse but if there's a reason, that's why.
We have several folks on our client list who have supported us wonderfully throughout the years (a few of which who have been on board since the very begining!), and understand when something that doesn't look or work right that we will make our best effort to get there quickly and fix it. All three of us are involved with getting things taken care of and fixed. To all of our customers, we thank you for letting us be a part of your holiday season.
We don't go on mission trips as much as we did in the early years, but we still contribute a large portion of our proceeds to mission organizations involved with building or operating orphanages. In addition we also contribute to folks who go on mission trips. We started out 8 years ago to help folks and this was our avenue to do so. By letting us help light up your world, we still get to participate in lighting up the lives of young people in less developed parts of the world. Thank you for being part of that.
As always, if you need anything or have any questions, please shoot us an email at [email protected].
Thank you.
