as i continue to explore the idea of what good news looks like to different people i was able to see first hand what it meant to francisco, the principal of an under-resourced elementary school in east aurora. today, tracy and i headed over to brady elementary school to lead a team of volunteers to clean-up, fix-up, and improve the outside of the building located in the center of a rather run-down neighborhood. there were probably about 80 different volunteers around the school re-painting the playground, cutting down dead limbs from trees, mulching around bushes and trees, planting flowers, picking up broken glass and other debris from the yard, laying railroad ties around the playground, building park benches, fixing fences, etc, etc, etc. in about 4 hours the entire outside of the building was transformed from looking gloomy and grim to looking beautiful.
francisco, the pricnipal, was in awe of all the people that had come out to make a difference. his face was beaming the entire time. i had the opportunity to talk to him on several occaisions to ask him about the front of the school (the area that my team was working to improve) and what it was that he would like to see, and each and every time his response was “you’ve already made it look amazing!” so, we pressed on, planting flowers, cleaning glass, planting grass seed and creating a couple of flowerbeds where there used to be trees.
this was good news to francisco. this was an explosion of beauty, the gospel in action.
a young girl named janessa came from 2-blocks away carrying all of the tools she could muster from her garage to pitch in and help. several children and even a couple of aduls from the surrounding houses even came out to lend a hand… and many sat out on their porches watching this crew of white people in a mainly hispanic neighborhood come out and work.
this was good news to the community. this was the church expressing love to a community in real and tangible ways. this was an explosion of beauty, the good news in action.
the amazing thing about this is that brady wasn’t the only place that this explosion of beauty took place. two other schools at the exact same time (waldo and bardwell) were descended upon! over 300 people from CCC came out this morning as well as teams from Starbucks and Home Depot to help change the look of a school and give hope to a community.
unfortunately i don’t have any “before” pictures, but the first 3 pictures are of the front of the building that my team worked on. we planted a ton of flowers around the flagpole and school sign, built 2 “flowerbeds, mulched everything possible, laid new grass seed, and picked up a ton of beer bottles, broken glass and garbage from everywhere!
the last picture is of the newly painted playground—which looks absolutely amazing! there were about 40 different volunteers working on the playground. (if you click on the pics you’ll get a full sized view.)
an explosion of beauty, the gospel in action.
Related posts:
- to busy for beauty
- the beauty of incarnation.
- an atmosphere where beauty thrives.
- what i learned from the church: hope
- master of the obvious.
It is so refreshing to see an explosion of beauty and grace with so much attention given to explosions of hate and destruction!
Way to go!