On June 2 we celebrated serving throughout Ventura County.  Serve Day is a collected effort of churches all across the county coming together on one day to give of their time and talents but mostly to share Christ’s love with their communities.  One such example came from the volunteers of St. Matthew’s UMC.  Here is their story of service as told by Donna Doman.

We worked on 8 mobile homes in Vallecito Mobile Park.  We cut several Oleander bushes down about 3-4 feet, trimmed honeysuckle that had taken over the back of one of the homes in addition to trimming several other large bushes, rose bushes, orange trees and lemon trees.  We washed windows, changed smoke alarms, moved furniture, fixed loose trim on stairs, and weeded a lot of weeds.  We had three teams working at different locations and a separate group doing the heavy trimming with a gas powered trimmer.  We all meet up at the last house with the biggest job and with 17 of our 19 volunteers working we still spent another 1 1/2  hours there.  It was a long but rewarding day.  We were thankful we were able to help so many people who needed the help.  Each owner blessed us for doing the work they couldn’t do and we in return blessed them for allowing us to serve them.  All in all it was a very rewarding day for everyone involved. We were reminded of the quote by St. Vincent Palloti, “Remember that the Christian life is one of action; not of speech and daydreams.”

On April 2nd I received an email from Joy Lawson , one of our ACTION Angels, that a group had made 12 beautiful Easter baskets that they wanted ACTION to have. Their goal was to give them out to kids in the community that were less fortunate and would perhaps not receive a treat on Easter.

When I went to pick up the baskets I was delighted at how beautiful each basket was, each uniquely made by a special friend. And, to my surprise I had the pleasure of meeting the founder of the Happy Friends Club, which is the group that made the baskets, as well as her daughter, Lisa.

Jean McGuire created the Happy Friends Club in 2005 in hopes of creating a social, recreational support group for people with mental and/or physical disadvantages, a cause close to her heart since her daughter has special needs and is an active member of the group.

With Jean’s blessing and continued commitment to giving back to the community that has given so much to her and her daughter, these baskets will be lovingly given to the women and children at the Kingdom Center in Oxnard.

This past weekend, Dave Crown and the Ramp Up Ministry struck again in Ventura, blessing a wheelchair bound, disabled senior gentleman and his wife.

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