On June 2 we celebrated serving throughout Ventura County. Serve Day is a collected effort of churches all across the county coming together on one day to give of their time and talents but mostly to share Christ’s love with their communities. One such example came from the volunteers of St. Matthew’s UMC. Here is their story of service as told by Donna Doman.
We worked on 8 mobile homes in Vallecito Mobile Park. We cut several Oleander bushes down about 3-4 feet, trimmed honeysuckle that had taken over the back of one of the homes in addition to trimming several other large bushes, rose bushes, orange trees and lemon trees. We washed windows, changed smoke alarms, moved furniture, fixed loose trim on stairs, and weeded a lot of weeds. We had three teams working at different locations and a separate group doing the heavy trimming with a gas powered trimmer. We all meet up at the last house with the biggest job and with 17 of our 19 volunteers working we still spent another 1 1/2 hours there. It was a long but rewarding day. We were thankful we were able to help so many people who needed the help. Each owner blessed us for doing the work they couldn’t do and we in return blessed them for allowing us to serve them. All in all it was a very rewarding day for everyone involved. We were reminded of the quote by St. Vincent Palloti, “Remember that the Christian life is one of action; not of speech and daydreams.”