Pay it Forward Parking

We have all experienced this at one time or another. We think we have paid attention to street signs…and then we walk out to our car and see a parking ticket. Well, this scenario happened to a recent Extreme Community Makeover volunteer, Dylan. Dylan volunteered as an individual and was working on a resident’s home in the Westwood neighborhood with a group from YouthWorks. When they got to the home to start the project, Dylan parked his car…later to find out he was on the wrong side of the street, since it was scheduled for street sweeping that day.Lisa was with the group from YouthWorks, who was visiting with Living Waters Lutheran Church in Fargo, North Dakota. “We were all working on the house and the parking cop came up to us and asked us whose vehicle this was, probably since it had an out of state license plate. So, we moved our van. However, Dylan, got a ticket because his car was parked further up the street and had a Colorado license plate. The parking cop gave us a warning, but Dylan did not get a warning,” explains Lisa.“We were there for our mission week, which YouthWorks helps organize in the city of Denver,” says Lisa. Lisa, her husband Jeff, and the eight high school youth felt terrible that Dylan got a $50 parking ticket.Interestingly, each member of the Living Waters Lutheran team was given $5 before leaving on their eight day trip. The $5 was given as a way for each of them to “pay it forward” to something meaningful that they wanted to contribute toward. After realizing Dylan got stuck with a $50 parking ticket, the eight high schoolers each volunteered to give their $5 to Dylan, making a total of $40.  So Lisa and Jeff chipped in the remaining $10 to come up with $50 total!“We planned to give the money to Dylan after our lunch break. However, it rained and hailed on us and we were assigned something different to work on so we were not able to finish our project at that house,” says Lisa.Even though Lisa and her team were not able to give the money to Dylan personally, they handed off the request to Extreme Teams member, Eric, so he could pass the money along to Dylan.ECM wants to thank Lisa and the team from Living Waters Lutheran church for their generosity. Thank you for being a Good Neighbor to Dylan! Your kindness of paying it forward will not be soon forgotten.Good Neighbors are angels walking among us. They realize the beauty in the big and small acts of being kind and doing good to those around them. If you’d like to nominate a Good Neighbor, click here.