Novel church service - San Diego Union Tribune
Joe Wallake, the facilities manager for San Diego Rescue Mission, stood in the middle of the hubbub and marveled. Dozens of volunteers were busy slathering dazzling white paint on the dingy walls of the mission's downtown parking garage yesterday.
Getting the garage painted was an essential project but one so far down Wallake's priority list that he said it would have taken his four-person maintenance crew at least a year to get to, if then.
“Oh my gosh, this is so awesome,” Wallake said, a smile crossing his face. “Having so many helping hands means so much.”
That's just what volunteer John Haney wanted to hear.
Haney was among the two dozen volunteers at the garage and the estimated 1,500 hundred men, women and children who fanned out across the county yesterday to paint schools, plant gardens, serve meals, spruce up parks, and clean homeless shelters to benefit dozens of nonprofit organizations up and down the coast.
It was part of Community Serve Day, sponsored by Solana Beach Presbyterian Church as a way of turning Sunday worship service into a day of community service. Instead of sitting in pews, parishioners tugged on gloves, wielded paint brushes and brooms and went to work.
