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Church Volunteers Lend a Hand: First Covenant's Members Come Out in Force to Help Community Transformation.

Posted on: Thursday, 16 February 2006, 09:01 CST

By Molly Dugan, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Feb. 16--In a mere four hours, Patty Kopsie's Rancho Cordova home was transformed.

More than 25 volunteers from First Covenant Church, which has about 2,500 members drawn from throughout the region, arrived Saturday morning to fix up the house, inside and outside.

The crew installed new sinks, vanities and lights, cleared debris, repaired the roof, planted flowers, trimmed trees - and that was just in the first hour or so.

"It's not the same place," Kopsie said. "This is an extreme makeover, First Covenant-style."

Kopsie, a widow living with her widowed daughter and grandson, struggles to maintain her home. Her husband and her daughter's husband both started projects on the home but died before they could finish.

Kopsie has severe arthritis, and her relatives can do only so much, she said. To thank the church, she baked cookies for the congregation.

"I feel very blessed and grateful," she said. "My house is beautiful now."

Nearly 950 volunteers from First Convent Church repaired 20 homes on Saturday and cleaned up several other places in town, including Mitchell Middle and Cordova High schools, Mather Community Campus, the Rancho Cordova Neighborhood Center, the Women Escaping a Violent Environment thrift store, Hagan Park and Casa Coloma Retirement Home.

Volunteers picked up trash along Coloma Road, Folsom Boulevard and Sunrise Boulevard and cleaned and organized the offices of local nonprofits.

The church organized the event to celebrate "40 Days of Community," a worldwide Christian program that encourages congregations to serve their communities.

The idea is that people work better as a team than they do alone, said First Covenant's senior pastor, Ted Smith.

The purpose, Smith said, is to allow the church's members to get to know one another and serve the community.

"We cannot function as a country club," Smith said. "We need to function as a mission station that reaches out to the nonmembers and show that we really do care about the community that we are right in the middle of."

Tom Jeske, a volunteer and the project leader for Kopsie's house, said participants enjoyed doing the work.

"The most important thing for me is that you're working with people you normally don't get to see. When you work side by side, you really get to know them," Jeske said. "It was a blessing for everybody. That was the best part of it."

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Sacramento Bee

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