No Vacation Bible School for two Suffolk churches

Suffolk Presbyterian Church and West End Baptist Church are breaking a 30-year tradition.

Well, maybe just modifying it.

For decades, the two downtown churches have partnered to offer Vacation Bible School for a week during the summer to the community. This year, however, they are taking their mission to the streets with community projects and a yard sale today.

“We are looking outside the church to see how we can help our community,” says Cindy Robinson, West End Baptist’s co-leader of the effort. “It’s what God instructs us to do, and we are seeking to be faithful to that.”

The two churches will participate in a community-wide work day today. The work day will include several concurrent projects that will help out those in the community who are in need.

Projects include yard work for the elderly or sick, trash pickup on a local street and small construction projects. Church members will be posted at a local Laundromat to feed quarters into washers and dryers for patrons. School tote bags are being sewn for students at Elephant’s Fork Elementary, and one group is gathering personal hygiene items to create kits for the staff at the Western Tidewater Free Clinic to hand out to others in need.

Also on Saturday, from 8 a.m. to noon, the churches will hold a yard sale on the front lawn of Suffolk Presbyterian Church, 410 N. Broad St., where everything will be sold for 25 cents.

“We are not selling items to make a profit,” said Lou Ventura, co-leader from Suffolk Presbyterian. “We want to offer things such as gently used clothes, household items and baby things that people need but perhaps can’t afford right now, even at typically low yard sale prices.”

Group members will be wearing red Operation Inasmuch T-shirts on their work day, and both congregations will meet at West End Baptist on Sunday for their first joint worship service to share and celebrate the work day successes. Pastor Rebecca Lesley from Suffolk Presbyterian will lead worship.