A volunteer group from the Aylmer Baptist Church in Aylmer, Ont. will be coming to Morley from Aug. 18 - 24 to help to update the Morley United Church and the manse (church house).
The group of eight will consist of Reverend Cam Watts, two retired teachers, a great-grandmother, a police college instructor, an administrative assistant and youth leader, a trucker and a high school student.
They originally intended to help Morley flood victims, but the contract was vetted out to a Calgary firm, so the group, along with Reverend John W. Friesen from the Morley United Church, decided that working on the church that has been around since the 1920s would be a good alternative option.
According to Watts, the church does a faith mission trip every other year, which they started in 2000.
He said the trips help members of the church develop a better sense of what it means to have neighbours far beyond their own community.
“When I arrived at the church in 1997, one of the youth leaders and I began to talk about the possibility of doing this as a service and educational opportunity for our young people,” Watts said.
In 1999, the church took a small group to the meeting of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America and they made connections with people from Puerto Rico and later offered to come and help after the devastation of Hurricane Georges.
“It was so good for us that the church made a commitment to sponsor one (trip) at least every two years. They since have become multi-generational trips,” he said adding that this trip to Morley includes everyone from a teenager to a senior.
Since they began doing the trips they have visited New Orleans several times to help with the Hurricane Katrina cleanup, Inuvik to build a wheelchair ramp for the Anglican Church and run a children’s program, Windsor to work on a home for refugee claimants, Vieques to help rebuild meeting facilities for a grassroots advocacy group and Cuba to learn from and work with the Martin Luther King Centre for Peace and Justice in Havana.
Friesen said they have a lot of projects for the group to work on, including fixing some steps and working on a kitchen for the church. He said they hope to involve some of their congregational members in the activities as well.
