Beauty For Ashes

Early last Sunday morning, around 1 am, The Branches United Methodist Church sanctuary and brand new playground was burnt down. As you can probably imagine, life around here is now chaos. As it was, we did not have enough space to house all the activities we had going on at the church and community center. We utilized our outside space to the max, so when it rained we had a hard time housing all the children and youth that we serve. Now, as you can imagine, it has turned into a daily scramble trying to find places to continue our programming and serve all the people in the community that we can.

Sunday morning, we had an incredible church service outside. We all slathered on sunscreen and sang and praised God and did a lot of crying. However, the overall tone of the service was positive. The words of our pastor, Audrey Warren, "God is bigger!" rang through the

neighborhood as news crews, neighbors, and church members sat on blankets and folding

chairs. The church has received a lot of publicity for all that is going on. Since the investigation has ruled out everything but arson, news stations have been eating our story up, twisting it from every angle: from the issue of gangs, to a sorrowful story of hatred, to a positive story of hope. Because of this, programming at work this week has been difficult. So many people in the community have dropped by to bring money, food, clothes, even furniture. We don't have room for the items being donated, but they all just keep coming! News stations are swarming the area trying to interview children and youth and people are always walking around taking pictures, or trying to find out more information. If nothing else, it shows us as an organization, the true impact that we have on the community. People keep driving by saying, "My sister-in-law's uncle's cousin went to Branches six years ago and we just had to come see the sad news for ourselves!" This organization truly has a community full of supporters, despite the bad that we have seen this week, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

The support that Branches has received has been incredible to witness. To add insult to injury, all of our laptop computers were stolen during the chaos of trying to have church outside on

Sunday and make a plan to rebuild the buildings. Of course, a news crew jumped all over the story immediate

ly, sewing a story of deep sorrow and how "our faith is being tested." However, this news story reached all over the greater Miami area and because of this, seven new laptops have been donated to Branches. People that don't have any connection to Branches at all have been calling from all over the state saying, "I heard about the story on the news, what can I do?"

Our community has shown us what it means to be supported in a time of need. A young woman who doesn't even have enough money to feed her family stopped by and handed Audrey an

envelope of cash, telling her that when she earned more, she would give it to the church. One of our student's friends gave him a dollar and told him to give it to the church to help it be rebuilt. In the past three days alone, there have been countless more stories of generosity and charity. We have been wrapped in the love and support of community members as well as the greater church. Wealthier churches in north Miami have donated things like temporary playgrounds, laptops, tents, sunshades, fans, and lots of snacks and food for our kids. There are no words to describe the work of God that we are witnessing unfold right before our eyes. God is making the words of our pastor ring true each and every day, "God is bigger than all of this."