When the Monday of Serve Ogden came, hundreds of people converged on Washington Heights to meet their work teams. After some emotional words by Jimi, a heartfelt thank you from Jeremy Smith of Ogden City, and a quick breakfast donated by the local McDonald's, the teams headed off to 24 homes in downtown Ogden to begin work. Each home had about a dozen volunteers in red Serve Ogden T-shirts scurrying around, painting, doing landscaping, replacing gutters and repairing fences. In addition, several of the homes received new porches and roofs.
Since the project focused on the downtown area, the red-shirted army became a familiar site in downtown Ogden by the end of the week. Anyone who was willing had some place to serve, including families with small children. Our junior high pastor and I intentionally did not have a "youth house" where all the students served in their own group. Instead, we encouraged students to serve with their families; and as a result, most houses had several generations serving side by side. As a youth pastor, one of my biggest joys during Serve Ogden was seeing students serve on just about every street in downtown Ogden, having conversations about serving Jesus with adults they may never have met within the walls of our church building.
In all, 550 people volunteered during the week of Serve Ogden. For most of us who volunteered, it was a fun week of work, new friends and getting to know the families who lived in the homes. We hadn't truly understood the full impact of what had happened during the week until Jeremy told Jimi that in that one week we had accomplished what usually takes the city's community development division a year and hundreds of thousands of dollars to do.
This was a great experience for our church, and you can find more info and videos on the in-town mission trip here, here, here, here, and here.
