Elder Crespo begins handing out the first of the Helping Hands Vests
Missionaries, Church members and people from the community begin cleaning
Missionaries carefully plant some of the 300 plants that were donated.
At the end of the project every enjoys visiting with each other and admiring the clean park
Saturday, July 1, 2006
What a blessing. The sky is clear and blue; the sun is shining and a gentle breeze is blowing – a perfect morning for the beach clean-up service project. We had breakfast at the hotel café and then went over to the church where many people were already gathered. Elder Crespo began handing out the “Helping Hands” vests. I was so happy to see that they looked fine on all sizes of people and everyone seemed happy to wear them.
Many members joined the missionaries and about
Dumaguete has a boulevard along the beach with a wide, strip park with many large trees and then a wide sidewalk. In preparation for a service project, Elders Clark and Crespo had gone to meet the mayor to ask him what they could do to help and he said his top priority was to clean all trash along the beach side of the boulevard, the park and the beach. It was low tide; the sun was shining; people had showed up to work. What more could we want!
More and more members and a few people from the community joined in and at least 140 vests were handed out. The missionaries and others began working right away. Some of the sisters in Dumaguete Branch had made mittens out of scraps of cloth and people donned those to pick up the trash. Elders Crespo and Clark had tools and trash bags and some members had brought native palm-spine brooms. We also had 300 small plants to put in. The missionaries set the example of working hard and quickly. We saw several families – old and young working together. It was a great pleasure as well as a good example to the city and a service to the community. All together we collected many black bags of trash that were picked up by the city trash collectors. All the plants were planted and the whole area looked neat and clean. Sky Cable sent a camera man to make a video to show on their news show and they talked to Elders Clark and Crespo.
