Shalom #12

The student service committee wanted an activity that would do something to help the community around the Jerusalem Center.  They decided that cleaning up the area around the center and also the street and neighborhood would be a good thing to do. 80 students and several adults (Dad & I) armed with plastic gloves, a few shovels, rakes, brooms headed down to the road below the center with the hopes  that some of the neighborhood  children would turn out from the  community.   We were ready for several hours of hard work and hoped they would be joining us.  Fortunately for all involved the weather has started to cool.    

As the children came from several streets around the center the students invited them to join in picking up trash, carry broken items laying on the streets, sweeping and raking the leaves, etc.  It was so fun to watch the students interact with the children especially those who have been taking  Arabic classes.  We all felt gratitude for the opportunity to spend a small amount of time and energy helping our neighbors of the Palestinian village of Es-Suwana (which means bedrock) and hopefully let the children feel pride in their community.   When the project was finished we had sack lunches for 100 children and by all accounts  we had close to that come and participate.  The Jerusalem Center is enclosed by a high rock wall and has very tight security.  When the gates were opened and the children were invited to eat their sack lunches and roll down the green grass hills you would have thought they had entered Disneyland .  No one has any grass on their properties let alone a nice hill to roll down.  The Palestinian  community leaders seems to be pleased with what was accomplished for them and know that the students left good feelings for their friendly, happy ways with the children.

We enjoyed helping .
Hopefully my kids will remember on of my favorite says,"Many hands make light work!" which in this case was true.
After several hours of digging, shoveling and bagging trash that was in this one area, they decided to build this little wall with the rocks laying around.  They were so proud of themselves when this project was done.  They had such great attitudes and were so cute to the little children that came to help them.