Spreading Love in Bonny Doon

 

In just over a week, I'll be back in Bonny Doon helping Bonny Doon Church lead a volunteer work day, Bonny Doon Love, in Bonny Doon to help CZU fire survivors restore their properties in preparation for rebuilding.   If you are anywhere nearby, I'd love for you to join me.  You can learn more about this volunteer opportunity by watching this video.  Yes, that's my voice narrating!

                                                                      

It was incredible how people from all over the country wanted to help us during and right after the CZU fires.  They still need our help.  Only 23 of the 911 parcels that had complete losses have been able to completely rebuild to date 2 1/2 years after the fires.   If you are not able to volunteer, perhaps you will consider contributing financially to help?   

This is our 2nd volunteer work day; in August of 2021 we helped eight families in Bonny Doon recovering from the CZU fires with the help of Beautiful Day and Santa Cruz Convergence.  Here is a quote from one of the people that we served on our 1st volunteer work day.  

"We used to go to our property and just stand there crying.  We were completely overwhelmed by it.  After Beautiful Day cleared a portion of our property, we brought our trailer up the next week.  We laid out burnt sticks for where my new garden would be and I contacted a designer." - Carla

This year our church is spear heading this on our own.  We are planning to help another seven families.

How did this all get started?

When I was evacuated during the fires, I never would have imagined how God would use me.  I was simply trying to find a place for Dave and our cats to stay and keep tabs on our friends in the community.  I am continually amazed how God's been able to use me to help fire survivors in Bonny Doon despite my having moved to Reno.   God used these circumstances to place me in a position to advocate for fire survivors. 

1. My friendship with Patti, who'd educated me about the incredible volunteer organization, Beautiful Day, headed up by Westgate Church and started by John Talbert.  John Talbert later went on to mentor a group of SF Bay Area pastors, he worked with the churches lead by those pastors to raise funds to help the people impacted by the CZU fires.  

2. My introduction to Pastor Brandon Johnson, who was rallying volunteers from Santa Cruz churches in the area to help with fire recovery.    John Talbert had contacted Pastor Brandon Johnson, one of the pastors at Santa Cruz Convergence (Convergence) to head up disaster relief on behalf of SF Bay Area churches.  The Convergence facility at the Capitola Mall became a distribution hub for tents, sleeping bags, food, water, clothing and other essentials. Because I was staying with the Burke's during evacuation, Barbara Burke invited me to go with her to help distribute supplies at the Felton Presbyterian Church.  It was there that I met Pastor Brandon, who was looking for contacts in Bonny Doon to distribute supplies there locally. 

3.  My leadership of Higher Grounds, our Bonny Doon Church's coffee outreach ministry to our Bonny Doon community and my position as an elder of the Bonny Doon Church.

4.  Because of the relationship formed between Brandon and our Bonny Doon Church, when John Talbert brought the head of faith based organizations in Homeland Security to Santa Cruz to visit the CZU fire damage, they visited our Bonny Doon Church.  Because of that contact, our church was able to advocate for FEMA to come to Bonny Doon to serve our community directly.

5.  Roughly, six months later, myself and Julie Cahill met with the Convergence pastors and discussed how fire survivors in Bonny Doon would appreciate help working on their properties to restore them after the fire.   We discussed the model Beautiful Day had in San Jose and agreed to reach out the organization and the pastors group that Brandon was a part of to ask for help.   With the leadership of Convergence and collaboration with Bonny Doon Church, we were able to host a Beautiful Day in Bonny Doon in August of 2021.   

6.  Because of the inordinate activities associated with fire recovery, Bonny Doon Church formalized a missions committee separate from our church board and appointed me as head.  Along with that responsibility, was given the responsibility of managing the missions finances.   In that role, despite living in Reno now,  I have been able to advocated to Bonny Doon Church to host another volunteer work day, "Bonny Doon Love" based on the format of Beautiful Day.

More about Patti

In some ways, you could say Patti is my Kevin Bacon.  Remember Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?   The night my husband and our two kitties evacuated from the CZU lightening fires,  I received a text from Patti, asking how we were doing with the fires nearby and inviting us to stay with her should we need a place to stay.  We felt the fire was far enough away that we'd be fine.  Little did we know we'd receive a reverse 911 call evacuating us at midnight that night.   As I packed up our most precious possessions, Dave walked around the house watering down the area closest to our house.  Just before 4am, we loaded up our two cats into carriers and headed out of Bonny Doon.  We pulled over at the bottom of Bonny Doon Road to discuss our options of where to stay.  By then, all the hotels were booked.   We called Patti, who was living in a one bedroom apartment and asked if we could stay with her.  She graciously gave us her bed and slept on the couch.  

Mind you, this was the 2nd time Patti had given me safe lodging due to a Bonny Doon fire.  I'd stayed with her in her San Jose home back during the Martin fire.

When Dave and I  realized how long we would be evacuated, we started investigating other places we could stay so that Patti could have her bed back.   The Burke family contacted me after I posted my desperate need for a place to stay on Facebook.   Pastor John Burke had been the Bonny Doon Church's pastor for over 20 years before retiring.