9/11 :: God's Work. Our Hands.

Today our church participated in "God's Work. Our Hands," a nationwide Sunday of service sponsored by our ELCA denomination. It is time set aside to serve our community. Serve our neighbors. This year, because it fell on the 15th anniversary of 9/11, we also expressed appreciation to our fire and police departments.

We had a brief kickoff service at 8 a.m. before we took off in our matching yellow shirts to various destinations. Some stayed at church making "tie blankets" for emergency personnel in the area to give to children during a crisis, some delivered cookies to the police and fire departments, some visited the elderly at one of the nursing homes, others painted and cleaned at the domestic-abuse shelter and a few teams did playground cleanup.

I signed up on the team for work at the ACT Playground. I did not even know this place existed next to one of the elementary schools. ACT stands for "All Children Together" and it is designed to be easily accessible to children with all abilities. The base of it is created out of a rubbery surface rather than dirt or wood chips so it easy to maneuver wheelchairs on it. Just a neat setup.

Our task today was some cleanup and mostly landscape work. We had to pull weeds out of areas like the one by the sign above. Yes, me with two black thumbs was charged with something garden related. I think if you are doing "God's work" you magically do not pull out weedy-looking flowers.

After weeding and trimming hedges, we had to lay mulch. A LOT of mulch. We're talking a pile that was almost waist high on me. Needless to say, we got sweaty and dirty and I had 10,000 steps before we left there after 2+ hours of work.

But doesn't it look nice?

Even though I wore gloves, my hands were filthy. And so was my nice shirt. Ha. No surprise.

There were several photos of our work in progress plus a team photo. I'll have to get a hold of those sometime. After all teams returned to the church after 11 a.m., we were served lunch and shared our experiences. I think it's something we may try to do again in the spring. There certainly is plenty of need for it in our community.

After church, I went home and took a little nap with Mr. Deck Chair. Since the Vikings game wasn't televised here, I headed into town for the Grand Affair. Basically a fall arts and crafts fair downtown with some good food. Chatted with several friends over a pumpkin spice latte and then grabbed some supper food from the Jamaican Kitchen booth for hubby and me. Yummers.

Came home and got some freelance work done and am exhausted. I am totally not cut out for physical labor (or gardening), but it felt good to be a part of something positive on such a historically tragic day. As our closing hymn reminded us:

The Lord now sends us forth

with hands to serve and give,

to make of all the earth

a better place to live.