On Saturday, October 2nd, we took a team of BrickThinkers out to Great Neck – Long Island.  We’d received word a few months back that there was a church congregation in need of some help, and we wanted to jump in and give a helping hand.  The biggest need for the church was to remove all of the fallen trees that came down in a storm this past June.  In fact, just within the last two weeks, they received a violation from the town for not having cleared the debris.  Because of the financial impact invovled with hiring a company to complete such a task, the church was praying for a miracle.

At a bright and sunny 7:30am on Saturday morning, a group of 22 volunteers left from Times Square Church, and loaded into a caravan of vans and pickup trucks.  Before long, the team arrived at St. Paul AME Zion church.  We were greeted with open arms from a few members of the congregation, and got right to work.  The chainsaws were started up, and an assembly line of workers started loading the cut up trees into the pickup trucks.  (Despite having received a violation from the town, we were actually given permission to dump all of the debris into a town lot, where all of the county equiment and materials are stored…quite ironic). 

For those who were a bit “timid” to pick up a chainsaw, one of the team members jumped in and began giving basic lessons on how to safely use it.  Soon, we had women and men standing side by side sawing away at the fallen trees.  Within just a few hours, we had already cleared 3/4 of the lot, and it was only lunchtime!  We were then blessed with a huge buffet of fried chicken, green beans, rice, cabbage, and carrot cake!

After lunch, we finished clearing out the trees, and raked up the yard.  The spot looked so good, that we had neighbors coming to ask if they could hire us to clear their property too!

All in all, we were able to pour out God’s love for the church to the congregation of St. Paul AME Zion, and help them clear out their property of the fallen trees.  We’ll be making a second trip out to the church in the upcoming weeks, to help paint and cleanup the inside of the church building.  Stay tuned for more updates and information about when we’ll be going.

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