Saturday, October 24th, was a nationwide day of service called Make a Difference Day (MDDay). Each year on MDDay millions of volunteers around the nation go out of their way to be Difference Makers by serving their communities. We hosted one of many events across the nation. We were joined by 100 volunteers, consisting of 13 home repair ministry crews, who gave their Saturday serving their brothers and sisters in Lee and Macon Counties.
Our day started out at First United Methodist Church of Opelika, where we shared in a devotion and a delicious breakfast (provided by the fabulous staff of FUMC Opelika). During our devotion, we began to talk about our theme for the day: No Reserves. This theme was inspired by a 19th century missionary named William Borden, who aspired to live a life of “No Reserves.” For Borden, this meant holding nothing back from the Lordship of Christ in his life. Our devotion emphasized our calling to live a life with No Reserves as we continue in our walk with Jesus.
After our morning gathering, our teams left for their ministry sites! They spent the day doing hands-on home repair with 11 different families. Teams also served at the Tuskegee Mission Hub and the Tuskegee Maple St home, our first neighborhood revitalization project. The home repair projects all differed: from installing sheetrock, to building a porch railing, to cleaning up an abandoned home, to building a new set of stairs: you name it!
Our families served our volunteers as well! Many of them served through providing lunch for the team, helping in the construction work, and even just being with the volunteers and sharing stories and experiences. We love being able to see the great partnerships and bonds our volunteers get to make with our families.
We ended the day feeling extremely thankful for the way everyone came together to share in God’s love. It goes to show that hard work (two long months of it, to be exact) really does pay off!
We are so thankful for everyone who helped Make a Difference Day be a success! The Make a Difference Day organization calls their volunteers Difference Makers. We made a sheet sign with that title, and let each of our volunteers sign the sheet with their names. The sheet has a total of 83 signatures, and there were countless others that were involved in serving our community on this day! Though Make a Difference Day is over, we pray that we’ll all continue to live out our calling of a life for Christ with No Reserves.
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