Serving with joy and anticipation

Cooking for the team is hard work! Photo of Gaithersburg team members in the kitchen with the Jamaica Village coordinator Dora Sawh. Photo by GPC.

Over the years since Katrina hit, our team from Gaithersburg Presbyterian Church, Gaithersburg, MD, has helped to rehab a variety of properties in our travels to the Gulf Coast, Nashville, Tuscaloosa and most recently N.Y. and N.J. for Sandy Recovery.  We have worked on many single-family homes of people in great need, but also on an apartment for the homeless and a motel.   We have given a large donation for rebuilding a church in New Orleans and to the Presbytery of Mississippi, tutored at an afterschool program, restocked a food pantry, and reorganized PDA warehouses.   We want to serve God in whatever way we can. 

So it was with eager anticipation that a group of us reported to the West End Temple in Neponsit, N.Y., to rehab the building they wanted to restore for their pre-school/day care program.  We spent most of the week hanging drywall, taping, and mudding and enjoying the noise and excitement of the children in makeshift quarters in the temple. The rabbi and other staff were around most days to thank us as were the parents dropping off and picking up their children.

It was a joy to support the people of that faith community with whom we share many beliefs and traditions.   We look forward to our next trip in the spring to the PDA site at First Presbyterian Church, Jamaica, and an opportunity to see how the Temple is progressing in their rehab efforts.