About a year ago, I woke up one day and realized my house was a mess. I had spent the “Covid years” working 65 hours a week in the office, and when my workload started decreasing, I looked around and found that my house was full of junk, clutter, and mess – inside and out.
I had be
en married to a “collector” (hoarder) for about 20 years, and when we separated, I seized the opportunity for a little dump therapy. Every weekend for several months, I worked at cleaning out my house, room by room. I became a regular at the Powhatan Convenience Center, making several trips every Saturday and Sunday.
When I was finally able to see the floors in my house, I started looking at all the accumulated junk in my backyard. About 5 or 6 years earlier, one of my neighbors had complained to me about the mess back there, but instead of cleaning it up, I had a privacy fence installed so no one could see it. I was so ashamed of the mess, but I just couldn’t tackle the job by myself with car trips to the dump. The stuff was too big and heavy.
Then I heard about the BEYOND initiative at PCC. One of the components is a bigger emphasis on the Do Good program. Wow! After hearing more about it, I thought maybe I could get some help with all that junk and trash in my backyard.
I spoke to my good friend, Bryan Pope, who also happens to be the Do Good Pastor for PCC. I was halfway joking with him and said, 
“Hey, I’ve got a Do Good project for ya!” I explained what I needed, and he said “Yeah, we can do that!” After that, Pope ran with it. One Saturday morning a few weeks later, about 20 volunteers showed up at my house with rakes, shovels and tools. They were ready to work! We filled up a dumpster in 30 minutes! I had rented a dumpster knowing that we would need it, but I had no idea that I really needed two of them for all the junk! Even after the dumpster was full, nobody stopped working.
Instead, they started filling up Bryan Pope’s pickup truck, and he made three trips to the dump that day! That afternoon, my sister and her husband came by to help me serve lunch to everyone and to also look at picking up a gun safe that I was getting rid of. My brother-in-law has back issues so moving it was going to be a challenge for them. Four of the volunteers loaded the safe onto his trailer and then followed them home and unloaded it into their house! One volunteer even used some cinder blocks we found in the yard to build me some steps so I could safely enter my storage building. In between trips to the dump, everyone grabbed rakes, shovels and tarps and moved the fallen leaves back to the woods behind my yard.
It was such an incredible day! I couldn’t believe how God was blessing me through the Do Good volunteers! I am so grateful for my friends that spent their Saturday helping someone out of genuine love and kindness. I can’t wait to pay it forward! I believe it is God’s plan for everyone to DO GOOD!
If you’re looking for ways to Do Good in your community, click here, and check out the events happening right now.
In this podcast episode, hear how God called others to places and situations they didn’t anticipate, and how you can learn from their experiences.
