Published Saturday, June 28, 2008
River of Life volunteers lend helping hand to needy
The Times-Herald
For most teens, summer means relaxing by the pool and family vacations to the beach, but for one group of middle and high school students, summer offered an opportunity to help members in their own community.
Cornerstone United Methodist Church is wrapping up its second annual River of Life with a closing worship ceremony at today's regular Sunday worship celebration. Involving 109 youth from across Coweta County, River of Life was a five day youth service project that was aimed at improving homes throughout the community.
Founded in 1995 by a Methodist youth pastor in Lincolnton, Ga., who wanted to focus on local missions, River of Life is open to students of all denominations in grades seven through 12, as well as adult volunteers. River of Life service projects can now be found throughout Georgia and Florida.
Cornerstone invited other area churches of different denominations. More than half of this year's participants are from Cornerstone while other participants came from churches across Georgia, including LaGrange First United Methodist and The Orchard Church near Gwinnett.
This year, Cornerstone's River of Life was centered on the theme "Christianity: It's an Adventure!" and had 13 work sites that included 42 projects, ranging from roofing and carpentry to painting and landscape. According to Mary Elizabeth Tomlin, co-director of the program with her husband, John, all projects were geared toward increasing the safety of the exterior of the homes.
"Landscaping wasn't about planting flowers," said Mary. "We wanted to make it so homeowners can safely and easily get from their cars to their doors."
Volunteers worked at seven homes in Newnan, three homes in Grantville, and three homes in Moreland. According to Mary Tomlin, homes were chosen with the help of local nursing homes, civic groups and churches and were based solely on the need of the homeowner.
"Our neighbors are in such need, such overwhelming need," said John. "You can't help but want to help people in that much need."
"We wanted to do something in our own community," continued Mary.
Participants were housed at Cornerstone for the duration of the service project, using Sunday school classrooms as temporary sleeping quarters. Aside from a lunch break and frequent water breaks, volunteers worked through most of the day.
"Each work site had a group leader and a site leader," said Mary Tomlin. "Group leaders were there to encourage the volunteers to drink plenty of water -- and then get back to work. Site leaders were there to help with construction."
Shower facilities for volunteers were provided at several locations throughout the county, including the Summit YMCA, East Coweta High School, Northgate High School and The Heritage School.
After a hard day's work, the volunteers worshiped, played games and listened to inspirational words from guest speaker Matt Roden of Crossroads Church in Douglasville and music by Potter's Mark, a worship band based out of Atlanta.
A common thread running between many of the youth volunteers' explanations for choosing to participate in River of Life was spreading the word of God.
"Spreading God's Word and helping others was why I chose to do this," said eighth-grader Ashlyn Cathy, from The Orchard Church. "I really enjoyed working with the people around me and getting the job done."
"I took time out of my summer because I wanted to help people," said Parks Millard, a recent graduate of East Coweta High School. "It's just nice to be able to go out and help people in my own community. The gratitude the homeowners showed us made all the work completely worth it."