Sandy Relief

On Saturday November 10th I spent the greater half of the day in Ocean Grove. I was part of a group from TCNJ that went down to help in the relief efforts within the Ocean Grove community. Our group composed of 13 TCNJ students from the New Jersey Christian Fellowship (3 of which are also Bonner Scholars), a graduate student from Rutgers, and a freshman at Mercer County Community College. Nick Lauda and I organized the group by connecting with a local pastor from Calvary Chapel of Mercer County. The Calvary Chapel ministry has gathered their resources and congregations from all over to come together for relief efforts in the Grove.

The operations are being run out of the Youth Temple of Ocean Grove’s Camp Meeting Association located across from the Great Auditorium. The Youth Temple is home base for volunteers and the locals to pick up donations and a hot meal. We were expecting a shipment of donations by way of two tractor trailers at 10am. The first one did not come until 2pm. In the meantime our group split into two operations. I took a team of 4 to help out some pastors from Pennsylvania to clean up debris and sand around the boardwalk and Ocean Ave. We got to the beachfront, which looked like a disaster zone with huge construction vehicles and machinery transporting sand to rebuild the dunes. The boardwalk resembles a wooden roller coaster that has not been maintained in decades. The metal railings were twisted and scattered throughout the beach. All the dunes were washed away. The sand that had covered the streets was pushed towards the beach. It resembled large dunes except they were on the opposite side of the boardwalk.

Nick’s team went door to door; assessing people’s needs and informing them of donation distributions. These volunteers had the opportunity to talk to people about the Christian ministry of serving one another not out of guilt and sympathy but out of reconciliation and love. Some of our volunteers were able to pray with and for people of the community. At the heart of the relief efforts in Ocean Grove is the calling of missional community Christians to be both hearers and doers of God’s word, to come together in prayer, in meal, and in worship for the glory of God. We cannot boast in the work done that day or how many mouths were fed. We can’t even boast about going door to door and sharing God’s word, the only thing we can boast about is that the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross once and for all.

The community of Ocean Grove is extremely blessed and extremely humble towards all of the time, labor, donations, and overall efforts flooding into the half a mile beach town. As both a Bonner and active leader in NJCF I felt a strong reassurance of why I serve. I was just in The Grove over Labor Day weekend and enjoy spending time there when I can. I was overjoyed to see so many people come out to help rebuild this community. Walking away from that day I can assuredly say to you that the relief efforts in Ocean Grove will multiply and go forth onto other coastal communities. It has been two weeks since Sandy hit their community and you can already see major change as a result of people responding to the call with love and passion.

                  - John Nally