Members among 1,000 volunteers who clean, fix up neighborhood in Oceanside, Calif.
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OCEANSIDE, CALIF.
After a volunteer workforce, including members of the Church, joined in a project that included painting her house, 76-year-old Charlotte Turner said, "It's wonderful. They're doing a great job to work for free." She has lived in her home on Oceanside's Arthur Street for more than 40 years. She and her husband raised five children there, but now she's alone. And, for her, to have volunteer hands come and paint her house was a great gift.
Mrs. Turner's is just one of 31 homes that were painted and cleaned-up on Saturday, Sept. 26, as part of a yearly community event put on by the city of Oceanside. For the 8th year in a row, the "Oceanside SUN" project brought together almost 1,000 volunteers — including nearly 250 from the Carlsbad California Stake — to harness their collective muscles at cleaning up a neighborhood that needed some tender loving care.
Latter-day Saints were responsible for work on 17 of the homes with "house captains" from the stake's ranks in charge of the actual hands-on work at each home. The house captains had been chosen a few weeks earlier and met with individual home owners in advance of clean-up day, to decide what work needed to be done at each home.
Stake President James Rosell said the Sun project allows Church members to "follow the example of our Savior by serving others, and it gives us the opportunity to help our neighbors — our brothers and sisters." President Rosell said the members, especially the teenagers working alongside their parents and leaders, learn "the joy of service and helping others."
Brendan Mangan, Oceanside City's Neighborhood Services Department analyst, said the members of the Church are the "most reliable volunteer workers" every year, and make the project happen, partly because of the sheer volume of people who show up.
Donning the bright blue shirts designating them as part of the project, the Church members combined with others volunteers from area churches, Palomar College, Mira Costa College and the city to paint houses, clean up yards, install new fencing, replace garage doors and haul away trash.
A little more than $75,000 dollars was spent to fix up the homes in the San Luis Rey area of the community near the back gate of Camp Pendleton. The money came from Community Development Block Grant funding, allocated for needy neighborhoods. The entire length of Arthur Street was taken over by volunteers who came to work on the pre-selected homes that needed the repairs.
A volunteer group of 25 men came from the "Fellowship Center" of Escondido, a drug and rehabilitation home, that had the specific assignment of hauling away trash and debris from the front yards of the homes. The city provided the heavy equipment, and the men from the center did all the heavy lifting required to get the trash loaded onto trucks and backhoes.
Oceanside Mayor Jim Wood said the reason the city does the project is to help improve the look of the neighborhood, but also to show support for the people who benefit from the volunteer labor.
"Getting here and seeing the immediate gratification of helping on a project is important," he said. "The home owners get more validation in seeing the people show up to help. It's more gratifying than just getting a check in the mail."
