 I'm Reverend Bill Lewis, the Associate Pastor and Director of Outreach at Flower Man United Methodist Church where I serve with our senior pastor, Holly Gotelli. And it's my pleasure to present to you Caroline Farish, our 2017 Harry Dimmond Evangelism Award winner for youth. Caroline is a junior at the Shelton School in Dallas where she's president of Chargers for Change on the Varsity Tennis Team and in National Honor Society. Congratulations Caroline on winning the Harry Dimmond Evangelism Award. Thank you. First, let's talk about Caroline about your work with the Boral Boone Methodist Church and School in Belize. Five years ago we began an annual week-long mission trip to serve the people of Boral Boone Methodist School. Our work there is divided between doing VBS and various maintenance and construction projects for the school. I love our work in Belize because year after year we make a real difference in the lives of the people there. But what I love most are the relationships we've shared. Here's why Reverend James Williams, the Superintendent Minister of the Methodist Circuit in Belize wrote, Caroline has a special connection to children and people in general and her sweet disposition and innate ability to interact with people make her a natural when it comes to sharing about Jesus. Caroline, tell us about why writing the devotionals this year was so important. Several years ago Bishop McKee said something that stuck with me ever since. God wants to introduce us to people whom we may not know so that we can introduce them to the God who knows and loves them. So together we can live out the salvation story. I wanted our team to live into this big idea. So I wrote a series of devotionals, one for each day of our journey, and it invited us to think deeply and spiritually about the work, about the relationships of the people we serve and with one another, and about each of our relationships with God. Now there's work right here in the North Texas Conference that you're doing as well. Tell us about that new thing you're doing at school. Right, so in January with all the stuff going on in our country after the election, I began seeing signs that kids in my school aren't being as kind and thoughtful as they could be. Now I believe that sheltering kids deep down are kind, thoughtful people, but we needed something to bring that kindness to the surface. That's where Project Kindness came in. Phase one of Project Kindness was an each-home room class. We asked every student and teacher to write their name in the center of a piece of paper, then pass it around so that everyone could write messages sharing what they valued about the person in the center of the page. At the end, each person got something she or he could hold on to and was filled with words of encouragement and appreciation, not only for what they did, but for who they are. Phase two, we created over a thousand sticky notes, messages of encouragement, which were placed on the main bulletin board so that when any student saw another student having a bad day, they could grab one of the sticky notes and put it on the student's notebook, locker, backpack, whatever, as a sign of support and caring, a not so random act of kindness. How'd that go, Caroline? We just handed 300 kids in our high school and all the thousands sticky notes were gone in a week. My name is Zach Ladd. I'm Dean of Students at the Sheltered School for the Upper School of 9th through 12th graders. Earlier this semester, maybe even late last semester, Caroline came to me with the idea for Project Kindness. She made the project her own and had a great time with it, involved others, and I think it helps others see Caroline doing this and realize they can do something too. Project Kindness will begin again when school starts, but there is another project that I'm very excited about too. It's called Peace, which stands for People Encouraging Awareness in Creating Equality. Peace will be a student-led series of honest conversations about race, religion, and social-economic status that we believe will allow our students to understand and respect one another better. She wants to make sure she understands her faith. She seeks to understand the faiths of others and how that impacts how they might act their daily life and how she can care for them. I think it's really a big driving force for her is where are they coming from so I know best how to care for them. I wish everybody in this world approached faith like Caroline did. We'd be in a lot better position as a world if they did. Caroline, that's really special work. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with the North Texas annual conference? Maybe this. I'm so honored to be the recipient of this award. I didn't even know I'd been nominated, so this came as a complete surprise. But here's the truth. Youth all over annual conference are doing tons of amazing work, and I'm just one small part of that. I've been blessed by the encouragement of great pastors, laity, faithful parents, and by the awesome youth of this conference. Here's what they taught me. Just do the work God puts right in front of you, and do that work with great love, giving all the glory to God. When you do that, it doesn't make you special, it just makes you Methodist. Thank you North Texas Conference. Thank you Fireman UMC. And thank you Pastor Bill and Pastor Holly for nominating me and teaching me. Just do it.