On Wednesday our group stayed together and went to the Hallie Q. Brown Center in St. Paul (www.hallieqbrown.org) where we did weeding all day long.
It was a long day, but by 2:30pm when we gave in to the youth requests for Dairy Queen, the results of our labor was visible and really rewarding. Not only did we remove weeds from the front, back and side of the building, but we also transplanted some of the plants from the back to give the front a bit more life.
But the best part was interacting with the people wh
o work at Hallie Q. Brown - it was clear that the simple act of weeding their garden was a big help to them. (Especially because they want the building beautiful for their 80-yea
r celebration happening this July!)
Thursday was our "Hard Labor Day." We worked with St. Paul Parks and Rec in Swede Hollow Park on the East Side. After learning a bit about the history of the park we hiked down the ravine to the "water feature" of the park, a small stream filled with 20 years of sediment build-up. So we put on gloves, took up shovels and buckets and set to work ridding the stream bed of sediment.
Our youth are hard workers and soon after starting the stream had already started flowing again and we had to quickly re-dam the top of the stream
to allow for work to continue down-stream. Around noon we broke for lunch and the dam just broke; we rushed to get out of the way of the water rushing down the hill to screams of, "here it comes!" Rose Lundy and I were just getting up the last patch of grass and dirt from a huge patch we'd been working on for over an hour and just moments before the water got to us we lifted the grass up and off the stream bed and dumped it into a bucket to be hauled up the hill to our dumpster.
By the end of the day we were all covered in dirt and exhausted but when we looked up stream from where we were working and could see the clear path we had made, all the work was worth it!
Today our group split a bit; one group is working at church to finish the painting we started Monday while the bulk of the group is at Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden learning about invasive plants and helping to weed out those plants from the prairie garden there.
It's hard to imagine the week is almost over, but it's been great.
1 comment:
You folks should be really proud of yourselves for rallying from your disappointment last weekend and making this into such a cool week of mission.
As a member of the Congregational Fellowship Committee, I want to THANK YOU SO MUCH for cleaning all of those chairs at MPUC. Our committee sponsors several events each year in the Social Hall, and we are SOOOO grateful to you for your work on Monday!!
:) Kelly Hulander
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