On July 17, 2020, a fire tore through the Madison Place Apartment building changing the lives of 49 families instantly. They lost their homes, their belongings and their sense of security. The Langley community instantly rallied around to offer donations of clothing and furniture in an effort to help the families rebuild. While all of that was very appreciated they really needed so much more. That’s when Pastor Paul stepped in. He arranged a sizeable donation of gift cards from the church’s Benevolence Fund for the families to help purchase food, clothing, household items, medications, etc. When he reached out to the church they responded immediately with more donations of gift cards and money as people felt the prompting of the Holy Spirit to help those in need.
At the same time, we had the pedal cars that we had purchased and we wanted to hold events as an outreach to the community. There was a real sense of needing to reach our community but how do you do it during a pandemic? As the Outreach team began to think about how to use the cars and what the events might look like, they caught hold of Paul’s desire to help the families and before long the direction for the pedal cars became very clear. In a very short time a number of key individuals took the vision, created a series of events, organized a team of volunteers, asked God to bless their efforts, and began the SouthRidge Speedway.
For 3 weekends in August the SouthRidge church parking lot as well as the Langley Christian school parking lot beside them were transformed into 3 separate race tracks. There was an adventure course where groups would pedal their cars around searching for a series of numbers to solve a puzzle, a time trial course where they could test their speed on a short track and vie for a prize if they were the fastest in their age group, and there was a race track that they could race around a winding course against the members of their group. The cost to ride the SouthRidge Speedway – a donation to the families of the apartment fire.
The community loved it! Not only were they able to help out the families but they were able to do something fun as a family in an entirely COVID-friendly event.
The volunteers that helped to make these events happen were so happy to be out serving in the community again. As they served alongside each other and connected with families they realized how much they had missed it. We often forget that serving others is a gift, not only from us – but to us, and this was felt in a big way at the events.
All in all the events raised over $1700 in donations for the families. Add that to the $10,000 from SouthRidge, $5000 from other churches and businesses, and over $1200 from SouthRidge families and you have a grand total of almost $18,000 that God has blessed us with to support the families of Madison Place.
What a great witness to those families who lost everything, as well as to the community, as they saw a church step up, use what they had, rally with other churches, and serve.