A couple of months back, Pastor announced that in conjunction with NECF's "Love Your Neighbour" theme this year, EBC would do a community project right where our church is located - Hui Sing Garden.
Hui Sing Garden is a busy place. It has a thriving commercial center populated with traditional kopi tiams & restaurants in the midst of a large residential area. And a very popular night open air hawker center.
Though the place is relatively clean, but as the adage goes: there is always "room for improvement" :) So GOTONG ROYONG was chosen as the most meaningful & practical project the church would embark on in service to the community.
A special note here: We are blessed to have brother Francis who volunteered to lead & organise this most meaningful project. From meeting the Mayor to securing city council approval to buying tongs and plastic bags, brother Francis had been busy behind the scene for the past weeks in order to prepare for TODAY - the ACTION DAY!
The Gotong Royong kicked off at 3 p.m this afternoon...to an OVERWHELMING response! The turnout was SO much more than what brother Francis had expected. Hmmm...goes to show a lot about his faith... JOKE JOKE! ;)
Here is a short video of the briefing:
Distribution of the necessary tools (tongs, plastic bags & gloves) before hitting the streets:
Here is how it works today: We divided Hui Sing into 5 attack zones with each zone having a dedicated team of "sanitary engineers". Each team would consist of multiple Units with each Unit consisting a Tong-guy & a Plastic-Bag guy.
Here is how a basic UNIT looks like:
Here is a team moving into their allocated zone:
By 3:20 p.m, we have like a hundred EBC members aggressively targeting those rubbish out there. No place was spared nor overlooked...especially those dreaded gutters!
Check out the photos below:
The BIG drainage gutter...
Small gutter...
Side-walk gutter...
Car park gutter... Like I said, no gutters were spared.
Obviously we didn't just cover gutters, but the team moved systematically everywhere combing through their zones:
General areas around shop houses...
Residential areas...
Public parks...
Public playground...
Grassy road sides...
EVEN road dividers... >gulp<
All teams exhibited excellent working team spirit with huge doses of energy. They seemed to be having more fun than "labouring". Here are some examples:
The loving hubby-wife spirit...
The HYPER-enthusiast spirit...
The "tourist" spirit...
The "adventurous" spirit...
The joyful spirit...
The "professional" spirit...
By 4:30 p.m...
All in all, by the grace of God, everything was going supremely well today. The weather was fabulous, the teams were all in high spirit, all had a great time, all were safe & sound...and we collected LOTS of rubbish, thus making Hui Sing, our very own neighbour, a MUCH cleaner place! Hallelujah!
To ALL the participating members - THANK YOU for a SUCCESSFUL community Gotong Royong!!! You guys were GREAT!!! And never forget who we are doing this for - as unto our LORD JESUS!!!
And not forgeting our prayer team too - THANK YOU!
To God be the glory!
