by Herb Young
The Hyde Park United Methodist Church crew was already starting on a number of different projects when I pulled up to the Hillsborough House of Hope. Much to my chagrin, I had rushed out of the house without the address and I got a little lost, and it put me 15 minutes late in arrival.
Not much had been done, but I still felt embarrassed that I wasn’t there promptly at 9:00am. I saw Paul Phaneuf and checked in with him to see where I was needed. It looked like we would be raking leaves in the yard, cleaning leaves from the roof, cleaning out gutters, and if we had time, we would be painting one of the garages.
As I started to figure out where I was most needed, I started to see the rest of the team from Hyde Park. Marlin Schmidt was on the roof cleaning leaves from the roof and gutter. There was Pam Melander and Brandon Baughn who had started to rake leaves, and James Louis and Brandy Johnson were sweeping leaves from the walks. On closer inspection of the leaf situation, it was apparent that those tiny stiff oak leaves blanketed the lawn throughout. It was also clear that we did not have the right tools for what was now appearing to be a massive raking job since we only had two rakes, with one being a steel garden rake.
Before getting into the raking, we were taken away to another task … to fix a toilet tank float that was hanging up. Steve and I went to tend to that first. We realized that this was a one man job, so I went back to the large task of raking leaves. We were blessed to get another rake, and this was exactly the type that we needed. Of course we could have used three or four more, but this was a start. We would do what we could with what we had.
I was completely immersed into the raking now and getting a good workout. We were making progress, but it would be difficult to finish this project by noon. No sooner was I thinking about this when a team of six men and a boy from Grace Family Church, each with leaf rakes joining to help. Wow, praise the Lord! We were getting provisioned by the Lord with an army of leaf rakers!
It was incredible … the team was entirely focused on finishing this task. I saw David Smith and Charlie Hamburger bagging leaves. We filled up the back of Steve’s truck with leaves and bagged another 30 – 40 bags by the time we were finished … and it was only 10:45am at that point.
We had one more project … painting the garage. During the next hour, our team, now counting more than a dozen people, made short work of painting the garage. We had completed our mission this on this Second Saturday in February, 2011!
How often have you felt really challenged and burdened beyond what you think that you can handle only to discover the Lord is there when you need Him? We were blessed by the Lord’s help, and the hard work efforts from our Hyde Park and the Grace Family Church teams which made this project a joy to work on. It was indeed a joyous day serving the Lord and lifting one of many burdens off of our friends at HHH.
If you would like to get simple joys in serving and enjoyment from the camaraderie in the Second Saturday Ministry, please contact Paul Phaneuf or Steve Rorrer.
Comments