Church News
Upper SC churches support Home Works
St. Peter's, Greenville, and Trinity Cathedral, Columbia, step up to the plate
Home Works volunteers enjoy respite at St. Peter’s, Greenville
By Tom Hovland
Thursday, July 19th; 3:45 PM – temperature
95 degrees +………….. A large tour bus and several vans pull into
the rear parking lot of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in
Greenville. Seventy one teenage volunteers and 27 adult
volunteers, all hot, dirty and tired seek refuge in the shade of
the church’s pavilion – quickly grabbing handfuls of Chex Mix,
cookies and glasses of lemonade, ice tea or bottles of water.
Nearly all stretched out on the cool surfaces of the concrete
deck or metal picnic tables.
Turning the clock back a few months, the St. Peter’s Men’s
Fellowship Group had heard about Home Works and their annual
planned one week mission in Greenville to repair homes for the
elderly or disabled. Home Works is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
organization that began in 1996 with the purpose of their
activities focusing on providing home repairs to homeowners in
need, assisting youth in their development and empowering
communities to meet the needs of its members.
The St. Peter’s Men’s Fellowship Group elected to support Home
Works by providing a meal for this exceptional ministry. The
Home Works volunteers team needs 18 meals (breakfast, lunch &
dinner) for their work week – all donated or funded.
Back to Thursday, July 19th: A team of volunteers fired up the
BBQ grill and the dinner bell rang at 5:45, signaling grace and
a subsequent stampede for the picnic fare: BBQ chicken,
cheeseburgers, hot dogs, home-style baked beans, home-made cole
slaw, chips, and plenty of lemonade and iced tea..
Following a short post-meal break the Home Works group gathered
for their daily evening devotional, then headed back to their
temporary quarters to recover and prepare for the next day's
Home Works tasks. The vast majority of this group was from the
Philadelphia area, and it was a pleasure to meet and talk with
them: spirited, hardworking, polite, well led, and focused on
their mission. Home Works is a prime example of how today’s
youth learn the value of contributing to the community. This is
where we “invest” in and can nurture our future leaders.
Here are some impressive statistics for their Greenville July
2007 work week: 11 homes repaired, including 3 new roofs; 4
wheel chair ramps; 2 new kitchens from the floor joists up; 1
new kitchen ceiling; 1 home exterior completely repainted; 1
bathroom plumbing and flooring replaced; 3 homes' fascia and
soffits scrapped and painted; 1 mobile home re-sealed, window
replaced, and door widened for wheel-chair access; 1 mobile home
exterior door replaced and handicap grab bars installed.
The St. Peter’s Men’s Fellowship Group have already committed to
supporting the Home Works Greenville work week in 2008, plus a
one day “blitz” event in October of this year. Any Upstate
church that would like to explore starting a similar ministry is
encouraged to contact Tom Hovland at
tomar617@hotmail.com
or by
phone: Home: 864.235.4259 (home), 864.908.8651 (cell).
Trinity Cathedral band changes lives on Johns and Wadmalaw
Islands
By Lita Middleton and William Middleton, IV
Our family has ridden down that long stretch
of River Road on Johns Island, SC, more times than we could
count, with its moss-draped trees and assortment of homes in
various states of repair, open fields, auto-repair shops, “mom &
pop” grocery stores. But until we drove up to the Edward Johnson
home at 3048 River Road with the Home Works caravan the first
Sunday afternoon of our mission trip, we had not really given
much thought to the folks who call this area home. We were
always on our way someplace else, our minds on a destination a
few miles down the road but worlds away from the homes and lives
lived out on River Road.
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The yellow frame house belonging to the Johnson family has been theirs for generations; in fact Mr. Johnson and his 7 siblings were born in one of its small rooms. It has withstood the years and is currently home to Mr. Edward Johnson and his son Keith. Other family homes now share the land once owned by Mr. Johnson’s father, a Johns Island farmer, but it became clear to us that this home, even in its state of terrible
disrepair, was
the true “homeplace” of the family. It was difficult to fathom
that our “neighbors” on Johns Island spent their lives in a home
they loved but had none of the comforts we know and often take
for granted.
On the Sunday before our group of 34 young people in grades
9-12, along with six adult chaperones, left the Trinity parking
lot bound for the Lowcountry, Canon Joye Cantrell spoke to us in
her sermon about the parable of the Good Samaritan. She
challenged us to answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” We
listened to her sermon with the upcoming trip in mind, knowing
it would be a living example of this timeless story. But we had
no way of knowing how profoundly we would experience the daily
presence of God’s love during our time with each other and with
Homeworks
Many of our Trinity missioners were veterans of the Homeworks
trip to Johns Island. Those of us there for the first time
shared an expectation of hard work, hot temperatures, locker
room showers and air mattresses on a gym floor, rewarded by new
friendships and the satisfaction of doing good deeds. From the
first Sunday when we previewed our home sites and met the
homeowners, to our daily meals when we were greeted by the
smiling faces of volunteers from area churches and
organizations, we were surrounded by love, gratitude and God’s
grace. By week’s end, we were tired but joyful, and bound
together by our prayers for each other, for our work and for the
homeowners we’d come to know and love. Together with more than
80 other volunteers, we had repaired 21 homes on Johns and
Wadmalaw Islands, re-roofing houses, cleaning out decades-worth
of possessions that prohibited a homeowner from living in her
house, replacing sinks, ceiling fans, broken windows, decks,
doors, carpeting, flooring, doing exterior repairs and interior
and exterior painting, demolishing and rebuilding rooms, and
more.
It was clear that the adults and the young people who made this
trip had obeyed the call from Luke’s Gospel to “go and do
likewise.” They worked hard, grew closer to each other through
prayer, and learned to love and serve their neighbors on Johns
and Wadmalaw Islands. Thanks be to God.