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Sweetwater Outreach Week begins |
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Written by Thomas Watson
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Wednesday, 02 July 2008 |
With the help of church members, volunteers and a little paint, the third annual Sweetwater Outreach Week is in full swing this week.
“Outreach Week is a program designed to help homeowners have pride in their house, help church members learn the blessings of service and give the Sweetwater community a renewed sense of faith in their fellow neighbors,” said Fourth and Elm Church of Christ Involvement Minister Doug Crum.
The program is a combined effort of several area churches to select several homes within Sweetwater that are in need of a facelift and then, with the help of a team of volunteers, scrape, paint, and do various forms of yard work, all free of charge. The churches have provided all the paint, brushes, ladders and other equipment for free as well.
The program began Sunday evening as church members gathered together for worship and prayer, followed by a brief meeting to outline the week.
The painting and yard work began at 7:30 a.m. Monday, but was temporarily postponed due to rain that day. Work is scheduled to conclude this afternoon. It will be followed by dinner and a closing ceremony at 5 p.m. to show appreciation and thanks to all the volunteers and workers who helped along the way.
One of those volunteers, David Griffin of Sweetwater, took time out of painting to talk about the event. “Yeah, its been a long hot day, but it’s been worth it. We started yesterday morning about 7:30, but had to stop for a while because of the rain. We kept working yesterday afternoon though and here we are again today.”
He said, “It feels good to help these people out. Some of them are elderly or physically unable to do the work themselves, and they don’t really have anybody to do it for them, or the money to pay someone else to do it. I’m really happy that we can do this. We’re scraping and painting and cleaning up. I just wish it wasn’t so hot outside. We’ve been at this for a while, and the heat definitely doesn’t make it easy.”
The churches involved with the event provided drinks and refreshments for the youth at two different houses on Tuesday. Both houses received some needed yard work and clean up as well as a fresh coat of paint to touch up a few areas.
“Unfortunately, we can’t work on everybody’s house that needs it,” Crum said.
But, he added, “we’re really going to try and help as many as we can.
Crum previously ran a similar program in Arlington with teenagers.
He said that during one week in that program, “We probably had about 280 teens helping out and we were able to do some painting and yard work for about 20 different houses.
“This is the third year we’ve done this here in Sweetwater and we hope to eventually work our way up to doing about a dozen houses in those three days. The more volunteer workers we have, the easier it is to help more people.”
The program has three prerequisites before a home is to be considered.
The first is that, due to physical limitations, the owner is unable to paint their own house.
The second is that the homeowner must not be able to afford to have their house painted.
The third is that the person must actually own his or her own house.
The group wants the homeowner to receive the benefits, not a landlord.
For more information, churchgoers or future volunteers should contact their pastor or call Doug Crum at the Fourth and Elm Church office at 235-8696, or e-mail him at
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 03 July 2008 )
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