By Joe Mazzella
One of the most beautiful signs of summer here in the mountains of my home isn’t the flowers, or the trees or the early morning sunrises. It is instead the return of the work camps. These are week long trips that church groups make into our area to help people to make home repairs that they couldn’t afford to do themselves. They are mostly kind-hearted teenagers giving up part of their summer vacation. They are always supervised, though, by experienced builders who know what they are doing. It always brings a smile to my face and a joy to my heart to see them out there in the hot, summer sun working to help those who need it most, with their only pay being the love in their hearts.
I remember watching one group building a new set of steps for a front porch one year. It was five teenagers being supervised by one adult. What got me the most was listening to him encouraging them. I lost count of how many times he said, “Good Job” or “Doing good” to them. There was one girl, however, who obviously had never held a hammer before. She bent 3 nails in a row working on one board. Finally the man knelt down beside her and instead of criticizing her, gave her a ten minute tutorial on how to hammer a nail. When he was done she tried again with a weak smile on her face and drove the nail in like an expert carpenter. The man looked down at her work and said, “Doing good!” once again. And I smiled and thought to myself, “Yes! they truly are DOING GOOD in this world.”
Wayne Dyer wrote, “For every act of unkindness there are a million kind acts.” And I see those acts of kindness, those acts of goodness, and those acts of Love every time I see one of these work camps helping those in need. They truly are doing God’s work with hammers and saws and smiles and a lot of Love in their hearts. May we all learn from their example.
