I am happy to tell you that Pastor Ruben finally let us help him the last two days of our week in Mayaguez by revitalizing the cottage yard. We painted the fence, the pool deck, three gazebos, raked leaves and cleaned out the gutters. It felt so good to finally give back, not to mention I love to paint. Painting is relaxing, it gives me a ton of quiet time with the Lord and I love projects where the little details matter. It would be so cool to paint a mural for the Lord someday (which one of my squad mates did at a different church in another city…Go Jade!).
We packed up after our week in Mayaguez to head to Vega Baja (near Arecibo) on the north side of the island. We have stayed in an empty house that belongs to La Alianza Oasis Church, but we got divided up into two teams of 10 to serve at two other Alianza churches in the surrounding area. My group went to a small church in Levitown to revitalize the interior of the sanctuary and the congregation that is slowly depleting in size. A leaky roof caused part of the ceiling to cave in and the retirement of the prior pastor led much of the congregation to relocate too.
It was two weeks of demolition, scrapping, painting and cleaning. We had to rip the wooden stage out because of damage and the outdated pegboard wall. Upon doing so we found two windows hidden behind the wood and a tiled stage hidden under 1/3 of the platform. [I love discovering original features of buildings during renovation.] Richard, are go-to guy for the whole project, was just as excited, especially when I showed him the hand-made square nails that were used to secure the stage into the cement floors topped with tiles as think and wide as pavers. I don’t work with cement much, so maybe these kind of nails are typical, but they looked old and hand-shaped to me.
The six inch thick (maybe thicker) hidden cement stage had to go too. You should see me wield a pick axe and a sledge hammer…it felt so incredible and reminded me of chopping wood, without the instant gratification of two chunks of wood falling simultaneously to the ground. It took at least 12 people and an entire morning to knock that puppy to pieces and haul it out to the side of the building, plus we tried our best to keep the tiles in one piece so they could be reused as pavers (I knew they looked familiar) in the courtyard between the neighborhood preschool and the church.
Two days of demolition, two days of scrapping and four days of painting later our mark was made on the little church in Levitown. It looks so fresh and bright. Our group also got to pass out flyers promoting the little church as we walk miles along the busy street shops in Levitown. My partners and I ran into members of the church, a Catholic Pastor who gave us directions to his church instead, a few very curious individuals and a few “keep walking” type of folks. Over all the exercise was excellent, finding a wonderful little bakery was bonus and the conversation between my mates and I was enlightening.
Here are some photos of our time in ministry:
Jazmin and Sabrina laying pavers in the garden.
Lauren and Megan working on another part of the courtyard.
Lydia and TJ clean the windows after we scraped the ceiling.
Sanctuary Before Our Arrival:
Sanctuary After Our Work:
It was so cool to see God show up every day during our ministry and in the people from the church working with us, especially Richard, his mother and the pastor’s family. My group even ran an entire church service: worship, testimonies, sermon and all. I will never forget my time there.
