Volunteer Service Review
Love and happiness increase as much as we share. Shall we listen to vivid stories about volunteer services?
With Burning Fervor despite Rain and Wind
We keep hearing news about voluntary services actively carried out throughout the world in obedience to the teachings of Heavenly Father and Mother. To participate in them, the members of the Kaohsiung Church in Taiwan conducted a cleanup around Kaohsiung train station. The station located in the center of Kaohsiung was built in the 1940s and is still there now when the once-fishing village Kaohsiung has grown to be a big city with a population of 2.8million. We started the cleanup, hoping that Kaohsiung station will be the first step to a beautiful journey for citizens with a cleaner environment. Many family members and friends of the Zion members participated in the cleanup. From a little 7-year-old child to a…
The Kaohsiung Church in Taiwan
Corn Ripening with the Farmer’s Sweat
At the end of June when the sun blazed down and the heat persisted, the members of the Wonju Zion went to a tomato farm and a corn field located in Sillim-myeon to help with weed removal. To make things smooth, they made two teams, and I got in the team for the corn field. Corn, which is considered as a national snack, reminded me of my childhood memories and made me excited even before starting the volunteer service. When we arrived at the farm, well-ripened corns and tomatoes were waiting for us. June is the period when corn is in full ear. In the corn field about 1,650 m² [2,000 yd²], the grass had grown wild. From a distance,…
Shin Hae-yeong from Wonju, South Korea
Make Even the Hidden Place Shine Bright
Streets in Taiwan are very clean since the public order is highly regarded. Due to thorough management, people are forbidden to drink beverages including water after passing the subway ticket gates. If they violate the law, they are charged with a fine of about NTD 7,500 [USD 245]. The ASEZ team to Taipei, Taiwan, planned to clean up the street, but wondered if there would be enough trash since Hsinchu is a clean city nearby Taipei. However, when we actually went there, we could see some trash here and there. While picking cigarette stubs and trash on the street, we found trash piled up in a dark alley between the buildings. The alley was so narrow that only one person…
Kim Bo-ra from Gyeongsan, South Korea
If We Deliver the Love of Mother
A special event was held in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. More than a hundred members from the Church of God gathered to clean up street for the first time. They divided teams; the male adults gathered the trash with big brooms, and the young adults, the students, and the female adults followed the male adults by picking up the trash into the trash bags. Under the scorching sunlight and the wind mixed with sand and dust, the five-hundred-meter-long street became clean by the hands of the members who did not forget to lose their smiles all the time throughout the day. It is rare to see a church activity in Bangladesh because there are not many Christians. But on…
Jo Su-bin from Incheon, South Korea
Even with a Little Act
The International University Student Bible Academy [IUBA] is an education program of the Church of God, through which college students go abroad and enlarge their experience during their school break. I, too, joyfully volunteered for it, wanting to have a meaningful school break. I went to Jakarta in Indonesia. Among many activities I did there, I cannot forget our voluntary work at an orphanage. From a week before we visited the children, we thought over and over the way to give the children a precious memory. The guide told us that the kids would be greatly interested just for the fact that we are from Korea, so we prepared traditional Korean games such as Jegichagi [Korean hacky sack] and Ddakjichigi…
Lee Jeong-yeon from Bucheon, South Korea
Getting Rid of the Old Yeast
Last Sunday, I volunteered to paint a school located near our church with the brothers and sisters from the 5th Lima Church in Peru. This time, my husband and my son were also able to join it. My family hadn’t had much time to get together with the excuse of being busy, but we spent time together at this voluntary service, which made it even more meaningful. We peeled the old paint before painting it over. We had to do that, otherwise it wouldn’t be painted smoothly no matter how good the quality of the new paint was. I thought the spiritual principle is similar to this. If we want our souls to be cleansed by Mother’s water of life,…
Luz Angela Benites Carpio from Lima, Peru
With Beautiful Hearts Together
Members from the Cape Town Church and the Bellville Church gathered together for a blood drive. Through previous meetings, we made a thorough preparation for pickets, refreshments, and recreation for the blood donors who would be waiting for their turns. When the event day came, we got even busier getting ready to welcome people. At 3 p.m., the blood drive started with the words of appreciation given by the officials of the blood bank. Thanks to the Zion members and the invited guests, the waiting room was crowded without an empty seat. The process of checking the health status of each person before the blood donation took longer than expected, but no one complained, because we took care of even…
Churches in Cape Town and Bellville, Rep. of South Africa
Three Percent of Salt That Will Purify the World
Not long ago, we conducted a street cleanup in Junggwan-eup, Gijang, Busan. The day before we were supposed to do the cleanup, it started to rain at night, and it didn’t stop until the next morning. We were worried about the bad weather, but thankfully the rain stopped at 9 a.m. and the sun started to shine. The cleanup started and we joyfully cleaned the trash hidden between buildings and the areas that sanitation workers couldn’t reach, and also cleared weeds that covered the trees and the waste in the sewers. We moved in perfect order with the tools in our hands such as mops, tongs, and trash bags as if we were one body. I was reminded of the…
Kim Suk-gyeong from Busan, South Korea
Motive for Voluntary Services
One foggy morning, the members from Santiago and La Florida, Chile, gathered to participate in the blood drive despite the cold weather. The hospital was very crowded with more than 400 volunteers. So, some of us had to move to a different place to be able to donate blood. People wondered how we could be so willing to do the voluntary service. Whenever we were asked about our motive for voluntary services, our answer was the same always: “It is to spread Mother’s love to the whole world.” Where will be the next place for us to answer this again? We’re very excited!
Jose David Ancamil Rocha from Santiago, Chile
Power of Unity: Many a Mickle Makes a Muckle
The members of the Church of God in Cape Town carried out a cleanup campaign. We were organized into four groups to meticulously clean up each allocated area. When the time to finish the cleanup came, all the members gathered. A truck went around the cleaned up areas to collect bags of trash of the day. It was a very large pile of trash. “Did we clean up this much just within two hours?” “It’s so much! It looks like we’ve cleaned up the entire city.” All the members were startled at the numerous bags of trash. ‘What difference could our cleanup possibly make?’ The thought we had before the cleanup changed completely. Individual efforts may be weak, but when…
The Church of God in Cape Town, South Africa
Where Life Sprouts
To preserve the environment, 28,000 trees were planted throughout the Gunpowder Valley watershed in Maryland. However, the trees need to be continually monitored and maintained for the first three to five years of their life. So, our Baltimore Zion members partnered with the local conservancy organization to help maintain the trees. Under the instruction of the guides, we checked the young saplings one by one to see if they were growing well and removed invasive plants around the trees. We stabilized the trees by reinforcing the tree tubes and stakes and by adding more soil to where the soil was swept away. Although it was hard work especially on such a hot, humid day, everyone cheerfully worked together to complete…
Melissa Hutchins from Baltimore, MD, U.S.
The Flowery Path in Cambodia
During the vacation, I went to Cambodia as a member of ASEZ the World Mission Society Church of God University Student Volunteer Group. The volunteer service that my team was supposed to do was painting murals. At first, we were somewhat confused because we had expected to give practical help such as donating school supplies to local students and cleaning up the streets. But making the living environment beautiful was as important as picking up trash on the streets because it was to clean the hearts of citizens, the owners of the street. One problem was that none of us had painted murals before; we didn’t know what to do. Then some members who were good at painting made a…
Seongnam, South Korea, Park Yeon-wu