Reflections from Craig Tan

Saturday evening, I was looking at the weather forecast online on an hour by hour basis. The three hours prior to the start of our mission showed a chance of thunderstorms depicted by a little black cloud with a little lightening bolt coming out of it. Of all the things to happen, thunderstorms would definitely throw a wrench in our plans. A slight panic came over me, I took a deep breath, and thought "A one hour delay. That's all it will take and we will be fine." After a prayer and a restless night, I got out to the site at 9, an hour before everyone was due to arrive, and the weather was perfect. Slight mist and overcast - a perfect day to do some work on a nature preserve. Prayer answered. We actually had some folks miss my email and still came out at 9 to get started early.

At 10:00, people started filing in and after an introduction by the staff lead at Banshee Reeks and a brief service, the people of CUMC were champing at the bit to get some work done. We had over 50 people come out to work on projects such as building a garden that will grow produce for Loudoun Interfaith Relief (LIR), creating the foundation of a rain garden that "energizes" runoff, removing invasive plants and picking up debris and trash. The energy that everybody brought was amazing. In just over two hours, the LIR garden team had made beds for the garden and lined them with cinder blocks. All in all, they moved over 36,000 lbs of cinder blocks! A few acres were covered by the trash clean-up crew and several hundred pounds of dirt and gravel were moved for the base of the rain garden. It was a productive day.

Then, almost on cue, as we were all finishing up, the sun came out.

What struck me the most the day were people's attitudes, motivation and vigor in helping Banshee Reeks stay beautiful. We worked hard, we were muddy, we were dirty, and we were taking it all in. I heard many times from folks that they never knew this preserve was here so close to Ashburn. That they really felt a connection to the land. And not only is it the connection to the land, but knowing that others will enjoy what we have helped create and that the LIR garden will provide a direct benefit to those in need.