Dozens of people from the Smithville Church of Christ are rolling up their sleeves and pitching in to help show their Christian love for others during the congregation’s second annual Work Camp being held this week.
“The Bible says Jesus went about doing good. We’re trying to follow his example by doing the same thing to show the community how much we care. Hopefully, all the glory will go to God and not to us,” said Shawn Jacobs, a church elder and one of the volunteers.
The church began the work camp last summer as a means of helping less fortunate residents of the county do some fix up and cleanup projects around their homes. “Many of them are economically disadvantaged and perhaps elderly and unable to do various types of work around their house that needs to be done. Things we’re doing are pressure washing houses, clearing brush, trimming hedges, and things like that. We’re building several handicapped ramps for folks who need them and need assistance in getting them built. We’re going to build a porch for one family. We’re doing some roof repair and a little bit of automotive repair, just various things like that,” said Jacobs.
Last year’s work camp proved to be quite productive and this year looks to be equally as rewarding. ” It’s been a tremendous success. Last year we had all we could do and this year it looks like it’s going to be the same,” Jacobs said. “We’re doing this with the help of our congregation and especially our youth group. The Gregg Avenue Church of Christ in Florence, South Carolina has a group that has come up to help us. We used to go down and help them do Vacation Bible Schools when they were a smaller church. They have become more established now so they are helping us. We also have a contractor in from Lafayette who came last year for our first work camp, who is very skilled and very accomplished. He serves as an advisor for some of the more technical jobs. Some members of our church have taken their vacations this week just to help out with work camp. Others have taken sick days and holidays. We also have church members who aren’t able to get out and actually do the physical labor. A lot of them are cooking meals for us. We all meet at church at noon for a meal and then go back to work,” he said.
“We’re not trying to draw attention to ourselves but to draw attention to Christianity and hopefully show the good influence Christianity can have in this community. There is a saying that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. We’re trying to show people we care. We’re doing this for free for these folks. We just try to lend a hand in any way we can,” Jacobs concluded.
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