Last January I was asked by my Stake President to work with a community within our Stake that would be willing to work with us on National Make a Difference Day (Oct 22 this year). Because we had our youth serve in Tolleson the year before I reached out to Avondale. I sent a letter to the Mayor asking to be put in contact with the appropriate person and a few days later I had an email from Gina.
From the early stages they were excited as they had never done a project of this magnitude before . . . neither had I. I had been part of a project of this size (we initially offered 500 volunteers) but had never been in charge of the entire project. Avondale soon let us know that they'd be interested in a smaller of 250 or so. With this information our Stake Relief Society President was asked to reach out to Tolleson and to make arrangements to be part of their service project on the same day.
One thing led to the next, and an Eagle Scout candidate took on early stages of one house to get it ready for our project. The week arrived and we had a HUGE dinner of 650+ people on Friday night where our Spanish speaking wards prepared an amazing meal. We had a presentation by our Mission President on Mormon Helping Hands in the Haiti earthquake aftermath and then we let the attendants know what was happening at the project the next day. Avondale and Tolleson staff spoke on the great contribution this project would have on the community and expressed their gratitude. It was a totally successful dinner with many contributing to make it all happen.
Saturday began with breakfast burritos being cooked in time for the volunteers to arrive. We fed everyone with plenty left over. We made a last minute change sending 40 of our volunteers to Tolleson as they were short a few volunteers. We then went out to complete our project and our captains working with the Avondale city staff captains was a perfect approach. Our volunteers were assigned to work to their strengths and so youth and mature volunteer's skills were combined for the perfect compliment making each of the houses look amazing and every project was completed in a few hours and people went home knowing that they had accomplished something great.
Afterwards I communicated with staff at Avondale and they were happy with our organizational skills, our ability to take a couple hundred people (380+ participated) and break them into teams, perform meticulous service and work in such a cohesive way. I was so happy to be part of such an amazing organization.
Sunday morning I woke up and had this overwhelming sense of gratitude to all of the key players that had lightened my load and made this project a success. Though I'm sure there were more that I didn't know about, I wrote thank you notes through the morning and then went to our three stake buildings finding those that had contributed to personally deliver the thank you notes.
I know that Mormon Helping Hands is a key way for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to create a positive public affairs image and to give us a way to focus our energy in serving as Christ would have us serve. Our church's image was improved in these two communities and people realize that we care and we want to help and follow Christ's example.
Yesterday I dropped some stuff off at the Avondale staff location and met one of the Avondale captains - she was so impressed and she had one of the smaller team (because we sent 40 people to Tolleson). She had my son on her team and they knocked out the project in a few hours. She just kind of gushed about the project. I was already thrilled with our success and her comments just made the impact much more intense. It's good to be remembered, but better to be remembered in a good way. Success, Success, Success! I couldn't be happier!
Andrew "couldn’t be happier” Brown
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