ELCA Youth Gather to Serve

  Approximately 30,000 youth and adult leaders attended the ELCA National Youth Gathering this summer in Detroit.  More than a dozen members of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church participated. The program featured an assortment of excellent speakers, musicians and media productions. But the most inspiring aspect of the Gathering was the participants themselves. Organized into servant teams, the youth, dressed in brightly colored t-shirts, were sent by the hundreds into the streets and neighborhoods of the city as ambassadors of goodwill.
          1,847 mural boards were painted
          600 neighborhoods were affected
          319 vacant homes were boarded up
          3,200 vacant lots were cleared of debris
          1,425 backpacks were distributed
          36 urban gardens were installed
          99 picnic tables were built
          26 dumpsters were filled

  Other projects were conducted as well.
          650 individuals donated at least 8 inches 
             of hair – 433 feet in total
          A blood drive resulted in the collection of 
             78.8 gallons of blood (607 pints) 
          1 million diapers were collected for needy families
          $402,000 was collected for the ELCA World 
             Hunger’s Walk for Water

  The kindness and generosity extended by the young people of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American surprised and delighted the residents of Detroit. “We did not go to Detroit to save the city,” said one participant, “but to experience it . . . and what an experience it was!”