Volunteers from Ponchatoula, LA

We are thankful for all of our volunteers from First Baptist Church Ponchatoula Louisiana. Last Friday and Saturday, October 6^th and 7^th, Robert Parkin, Minister of Youth at First Baptist Church of Ponchatoula, Louisiana came to Jackson, for the second straight year, with 46 youth – mostly young adults and several youthful adults to serve our community alongside Voice of Calvary Ministries (VOCM) here in west Jackson.

FRIDAY…
The first project our volunteers worked on was brought to VOCM by Ms. Josephine, a retired City of Jackson employee who worked in the city’s housing rehabilitation department. She may be retired but she hasn’t stopped caring and advocating for people especially her neighbors who are in need. Ms. Josephine knew Ms. Kristie and brought her to VOCM’s attention. Ms. Kristie has endured a few serious medical issues recently and, as a result, is experiencing financial hardship forcing her to move into rent-free housing owned by her family. However, before she was able to move in with her children, some much-needed repairs and cleaning has to be done.

Working under the supervision of our Facilities Manager, Mr. Carl Jones, the entire group worked hard, in the Mississippi heat and humidity, to clear an extremely overgrown back yard and demolish and load into a trailer a collapsed and rotting back porch, to be taken to the dump. They also cleaned up the property on the other sides of the house as well as the gutters. As you can see in some of the photos our fellow brothers and sisters sweat and dirt equity was a great blessing to Ms. Kristie bringing her one step closer to moving into her family’s house.

SATURDAY…
Two projects were tackled on Saturday. Eleven young adults and one adult went to the Animal Rescue League of Jackson to volunteer their services.

The remainder of the group met Mr. Jones at VOCM’s facility from which we equip staff and volunteers to perform housing construction and rehabilitation, demolition, clean-up, and various other community improvement work. Everybody contributed to the different tasks of organizing donated gardening and construction materials, cutting grass and vines, demolishing various old unusable wood benches and such, loading a lot of tires gathered over a few years from cleaning empty lots and loading them onto the trailer to be taken to the dump, and more. The work accomplished on Saturday significantly helps VOCM continue to conduct our work in the community.

ALTHOUGH their time with us seems short, their efforts are greatly appreciated. They leave behind the thankful hearts of Ms. Kristie, Ms. Josephine, and the whole VOCM staff for they invested in the people of our west Jackson community.

Place mouse over the top half of each picture to see caption.