Hope Children\u2019s Home in Tampa<\/a>, and when Smith learned that the girls\u2019 volleyball team didn\u2019t have all the equipment it needed, she decided to ask neighbors and friends to help. She has also received donations from her school.<\/p>\nOn a recent morning, Abby and Suzanne were packing up a recent batch of donations to take to the home, including volleyballs that Abby was filling up with air using a hand pump. Suzanne showed off some of the shoes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are great. Those are new,\u201d she said about some of the shoes. Others were gently used. \u201cThese came from a good family friend whose son outgrew these.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cA lot of people just, like, donate,\u201d said Abby, who attends\u00a0Calvary Christian High School in Clearwater. \u201cLike, we got these a lot from school friends, school families.\u201d<\/p>\n
People have also donated other sports gear, including tennis rackets. People also made lots of donations at a recent volleyball tournament in Orlando.<\/p>\n
Abby and Suzanne took their latest batch of donations to the Hope Children\u2019s Home, and some of the children helped carry them into a visitors\u2019 center.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt kind of just puts it all in perspective for me. Kind of shows that we are here for so much more than just to satisfy our own self,\u201d said Abby. \u201cWe are here to serve others, and that\u2019s what God calls us to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are just a great group of kids, and I know they are so grateful for receiving the items and we are grateful for helping to facilitate the process of getting it to them,\u201d Suzanne said.<\/p>\n
“It encourages us to keep going, because, again, we are called to serve,\u201d Abby said. \u201cWe are called to do what we are supposed to. It helps to see how they are using it and enjoying it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0A Bay Area high school student saw a need and decided to fill it. Abby Smith…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[767,2297,274,770,2296,28,276,115,2298,135,137,136,278],"class_list":["post-315493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-community","tag-app-everyday-heroes","tag-app-top-stories","tag-community-news","tag-everyday-hero","tag-florida","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-news","tag-rick-elmhorst","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}