Serve Day success
Thursday, June 12, 2008 2:11 PM PDT
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| Logan (from left), Kyle, EmmyLou and Jeremy Slagle, New Plymouth, participated in Serve Day, an interfaith service project in Ontario and Fruitland, May 31. They helped by rolling ground cloth at the new community garden adjacent to the Episcopal church in Ontario. |
ONTARIO — Nearly 200 Christians put aside their own needs May 31 to practice the biblical admonition to “be ye doers of the word and not hearers only,” (James 1:22).
They volunteered to paint, pull weeds and pour concrete for people they didn’t even know for “Serve Day.” They painted the dog pound in Fruitland and a seating area at the fairgrounds in Ontario, and they helped at the Hershey track meet at Ontario High School — 13 projects in all.
“We want to be helping others,” Serve Day organizer Sharla Phelps, Origins Faith Community Church, said. “That’s what Jesus did. Why wouldn’t we be doing that?”
She hopes businesses, civic organizations and churches will join her in another Serve Day next year.
Three churches — Origins and St. Paul’s Lutheran, both of Ontario, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints congregations in Ontario, Fruitland, Payette and New Plymouth — sent workers, but volunteers from other churches also showed up on their own.
In addition to volunteers, several local businesses donated equipment and provided paint and other items at cost.
Phelps said gratitude is a great reward. One homeowner walked around his yard with tears in his eyes, she said. He was amazed people would help someone they didn’t even know.
It wasn’t easy asking people if they needed help, Phelps said. Her pastor’s wife, for example, saw a woman puttering in her yard, so she stopped her car and asked, delicately, if the woman would like to have her house painted.
From public service agencies, Phelps learned that an Ontario woman was bringing her husband home from a nursing home and needed a wheelchair ramp and that another Ontario woman needed to move because of mold in her house. Both women were helped.
Originally, Phelps and other organizers thought Serve Day would only help four to six people.
“Then it opened up. It was organized by a power higher than my own,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what we do for people. What matters is that we’re coming together and doing it and making an impact on people’s lives.”
AFR wrote on Jun 14, 2008 5:48 AM: