Operation: Serve

When it comes to my faith, I believe in ‘walking the walk’. What I mean by that is I don’t believe all I am supposed to do is “fly flat, dumb and happy” for an hour every Sunday.

Himself and I are very active in humanitarian projects from those in our community to programs overseas. It is a normal part of our life to give back.

A few years ago we joined Grace Community Church. This is a young church, having opened its doors just less than 5 years ago. In that short amount of time Grace has gained a reputation for being a church who reaches out. One program we do every year is to host a city-wide day of caring called “Operation: Serve”. Over a 1000 people turn out to ‘serve’ our community.

This year we: had a day of pampering for nursing home residents, played “buddy ball” with special needs children, spruced up and/or made repairs to the buildings of several non-profits, sort inventory at a charity thrift store, made teddy bears for police/emergency personal to use with children in crisis, repairs to homes of disabled or elderly folks, a block party for the children of one of the HUD housing projects, and so on.

Normally I participate in one of the projects. However this year I was requested to be part of the team of photographers who documented the day.

I shot photos of three teams – one was building a shed for Mission Clarksville (the community garden project), one was painting the exterior of the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and the last was fund raising with a car wash & bake sale for a Guatemala mission (where we are working with a girl’s orphanage).

When each photographer finished, we went to the staging area where our photos were downloaded onto our church videographer’s laptop. Jimmy got to stay up late sorting thru hundreds of photos to put together of video montage for service the next morning.

Here’s just few of the photos I shot:

Mission Clarksville

ReStore

Guatemala Fundraiser