serveRDU 2012

ServeRDU 2011 from The Summit Church on Vimeo.

every summer my church puts on serveRDU which is basically a week of work projects and community outreach in raleigh, durham, chapel hill, and other surrounding cities. our mission is simple. we serve because Christ served us. we love because Christ loved us.

projects during serveRDU range from painting and landscaping to helping build houses with habitat for humanity, from hosting neighborhood cookouts to putting together hygiene bags for women and children in india who are victims of sex trafficking. there is such a wide range of opportunities that anyone could find a project to get excited about. i got involved last year and had a really great time. you can read about it here. 

this year i was able to help with a work project at the pregnancy support services of durham and volunteer at a red cross blood drive that our church hosted. 

the offices at pss needed deep carpet cleaning, dusting, bathroom cleaning, painting, shelf construction, mopping, etc. my team met around 9 on friday morning, and after a brief introduction and tour of their facility, we went to work. i vacuumed couches and floors, carried boxes of supplies from one room to another, dusted, hung mirrors, scrubbed walls, rearranged furniture. lots of work, but it was a lot of fun. the ladies who run the place were so grateful for our work and the volunteers were so friendly and willing to help. the thing i love best about manual labor is the way you feel after you have worked a few hours, exhausted.

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the red cross blood drive was my favorite project out of the two. i had never been involved in a blood drive before and didn't know exactly how it worked or what to expect.

i slipped right into the role of snack hander-outer, and i got to talk to each donor as i poured orange juice and handed out cookies. ya'll, people are nice. everyone was willing to talk and answer questions i had about the process and how painful it was (not very). most of them had donated before at various times and all had good experiences to share.

i hadn't planned to donate blood. actually, i had planned to definitely not donate blood, but there i was with almost everyone around me donating, and i caved. i donated. it wasn't nearly as scary as i thought it was going to be. as always, my fears were mostly in my head. the ladies took very good care of me, and i even got an oversized t-shirt for being the last donor of the day. oh yeah, solid score.

i had such a great time helping with serveRDU. it was a blessing for me personally, but to know that our church body became the legs and arms and hands and feet of Christ is what really strikes me. through simple acts of manual labor we showed our city what it means to love.

giving back

{photo credit: pinterest.com}

love comes in many forms, and one of those forms is acts of service. each summer my church puts on what they call ServeRDU. it's basically a week of work projects and ministry opportunities for anyone in the church body and surrounding community to be a part of.

i'm not a born teacher or leader, i'm the worst advice giver ever, and i can't seem to find my fit helping in the nursery on sunday morning. however, give me a paintbrush or a rake, and i'm good to go. there's something about getting down and dirty, sweating in the sun, getting paint in my hair that makes me feel like i'm contributing and making a difference. i can stack chairs like nobody's business.

i got to help with two projects during ServeRDU. the first was at an elementary school where we did a lot of landscaping-shoveling mulch, building flower boxes, cleaning a white picket fence, cutting tree limbs, planting flowers, emptying an overgrown decorative pond, etc. i was the lucky one who got fence cleaning duty, so me and my trusty bottle of bleach got down to it. bleach is no joke, kids. that stuff ate through layers of scum. my roommate, amy, came with me and spent the morning weeding out old flower boxes and filling them back up with beautiful flowers and plants.

{photo credit: pinterest.com}

the second project was at converting hearts ministries. chm is a relatively new ministry in the area that provides semi-permanent residences to help men who are recovering from life-controlling addictions. the group of volunteers met early one morning and were assigned duties including painting the inside of the recovery house, clearing out a property pond, picking vegetables from their garden, and doing carpentry work around the site. my team started the huge task of painting the inside of their house. we worked in small groups on each room and worked alongside several of the men who were currently living in the home as residents. it was cool to get to know them as well as people who attend my church whom i had never met before.

the work we did during serve week was pretty basic-yard work, sweeping floors, hosting cookouts for neighborhoods, playing with kids, cleaning windows, painting walls-but i think meeting peoples' basic needs is one of the most practical ways you can share love. have you ever had someone make you a meal when you were sick? or maybe even cleaned your house? if so, then you know how much it helps. i mean, it's just lasagna. it's just a clean floor. but, really, it's so much more.

giving love in the form of an act of service is different than giving love in the form of a gift. presents are always lovely, don't get me wrong, but when you can help someone do something that they couldn't possibly do on their own, it provides a sense of community that a material gift never could. that's exactly what happened during serve week. we gave our time, our skills, and our energy and we gained an incredible sense of community. turns out, we really are all in this together.

what's a cool volunteer opportunity that you've helped with? what was your favorite thing about it?

the weekend in review

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ah, sweet weekend. why must you be over? this weekend included the following...

friday afternoon sbux, hanging out with good friends at esm, jenga tournaments, work project with summit church involving lots of dirt, sweat and shoveling mulch, knocking my computer into pink paint (sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying), coffee bar and saturday night service, nighttime mini golf, coffee date with kami, learning to receive my affirmation from Jesus and not people (learning, i said), ultimate frisbee, devouring some yogurt mountain, being intimidated by a huge canvas i'm painting (inanimate objects are the worst), relaxing, feeling blessed to have such great friends.

what did you do this weekend? give me the rundown!