Sunday March 5, 2017
This cross greeted us when we arrived at our church this morning. In the early morning hours of Sunday, January 22nd, while we were between NOMADS projects, the City of Oneonta, Alabama was hit by strong winds that caused damaged to many homes and buildings. Lester Memorial UMC was one of those damaged.
Many people from the church and community met that morning to cleanup as much as possible around the church and surrounding homes. Of the many trees blown down one large one was in the church parking lot. The Blount Countian, our local newspaper, published an article by Richard Thorne about how the cross on the stump came to be:
A cross carved from a tree trunk sits by the parking lot of Lester Memorial United Methodist Church. The old oak tree was felled by a storm in February [sic] and Blount County resident Fred McCarl offered to clean up the tree for the wood. When he finished, he says he was inspired to carve the cross from the remaining stump. McCarl wrote about the project, ‘When we carve away all the bad things from around us, we can see the beauty that is on the inside. I pray the cross continues to make an impact on many others.’
It was really neat to see the cross for the first time this morning. It reminded us of all the crosses at Storm Mountain Center in South Dakota where we did several weeks of NOMADS drop-in work in 2014 when we were in route to and from Alaska. You can read about it at Alaska 2014 – Day 12: Trail Clearing at Storm Mountain Center. Good memories of Storm Mountain and our friends there.
Hope you have a great Monday.
RVing With a Purpose 