Our church seeks to be a blessing for it’s community. We don’t want to create another “come-to-us-4-nights-a-week” church. There are enough of those already.
Instead, we want to be the hands and feet of Christ in the community and surrounding areas.
Recently, our church partnered with Vida Joven Panama for a day of community service. Vida Joven helped determine the work projects and our church provided the volunteers and materials.
We spent a few days walking the community, talking with Vida Joven leaders to learn about their community needs. Panama Viejo is a different community than where our church is being developed. Our church is in the midst of high rises and a growing upper middle class. But just a few miles away, Panama Viejo is an at-risk community where Young Life (Vida Joven) has been working for a few years.
Entering their community, we did not want to impose our plan upon then, but rather, partner with Vida Joven to tell us some of the needs that they see and want to meet. At their invitation, we established work projects around needs that Vida Joven knew about.
The biggest project accomplished that day was replacing a zinc roof for a family. The picture below show some of the holes rusted out. We took off the existing roof, welded some new beams, and then replaced the roof. It was the monster project of the day. Other projects included painting some rooms and some some work in the local elementary school. There were other projects that were on the table, but we didn’t have enough volunteers that day.
We also gathered up several bags of dried goods, and Vida Joven showed us where they were to be delivered.
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