Wednesday, October 5, 2016

What's Happening in 2016?

Camp Outreach


It has been a busy year for Common Ground. In June we hosted another Camp Outreach that serves an inner city neighborhood in Indianapolis. This year we had more than 100 volunteers - our largest group of volunteers ever.

Volunteers participated in rehabbing and repairing houses for the elderly, single parents and the poor. We painted a house and garage, did two house siding projects, repaired a ceiling where the plaster had fallen, helped with sheet rock mudding/taping and donated a Corian countertop and double sinks and two refrigerators, repaired several leaking toilets, fixed holes in kitchen floors, repaired electrical circuits, fixed many plumbing problems, rebuilt a bathroom floor and reset the tub, did roof repairs and repaired a bathroom ceiling damaged by water leaks, repaired or replaced a number of gutters, mowed acres of grass for the Lords Pantry and more. 

We also conducted a Vacation Bible School for neighborhood kids and younger children of our volunteers. I think the peak attendance was 43. We used Group Publishing's "Hometown Nazareth" as the format for our VBS program. This includes songs, story telling, games and crafts. We fed breakfast to the children and anyone from the neighborhood who wanted it and lunch to the children in the VBS program. Our breakfast, lunch and dinner crews made every meal - and boy was the food plentiful and tasty!
This year we introduced a new ministry - "Food for Families." Our friend, Julie Molloy from the Lords Pantry selected five families (all with many children) who could really use help. Our young people went shopping and purchased food and delivered it to the families. It was touching to do such a personal, face-to-face ministry. I think we are going to continue this throughout the year.
Parents, grand parents and even great-grand parents provided leadership, food preparation and nightly talks. Some of the project crews and VBS tribe leaders were headed by young people who have been coming to Camp Outreach for years and have developed project and leadership skills.
We had volunteers from 12 states and 3 countries - with families traveling long distances from Colorado, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Canada and the Philippines.
Thought I'd share what 100+ wonderful friends spent a week doing. I have a lot of respect for every one of them and what they invested in time and treasure doing for others.

All the best,

Guy Swenson
gswenson@7words.com
317-707-5003

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