A sea of blue flooded the Troy community Saturday as members of The Vine Church, matching in blue tshirts, completed four different projects in order to serve the community in the church’s annual Serve Day.

Approximately 40 embers participated in cleaning up a park at the Autumn Ridge Apartments, helping customers at Food World get their groceries to their car, providing a free car wash and delivering gift bags to more than 100 businesses in Troy.

“Everyone was excited to do it,” said Josh Gray, Serve Day coordinator. “Two people from the Highlands church in Auburn even drove down to help us. We just wanted to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the community.”

Members split into four groups in order to complete all four projects. Those helping at the park got their hands dirty to give the apartment complex a park to be proud of.

“We knew the owner of the apartments was going to have an inspection, so we cleaned all the grass out of the sand and replaced the railroad tie that was holding everything in,” Gray said.

Gray said the children at the complex even came out and asked if they could help with the project.

The project at Food World led three people to Christ. Gray said The Vine Church members also prayed with the customers as they assisted with the groceries.

When members delivered gift bags to businesses throughout the community, the businesses were appreciative of the recognition.

“They had about 100 gift bags to hand out around Troy to all the businesses,” Gray said. “They saw a lot of appreciation in return from the businesses.”

Members also held a free car wash, not accepting any funds or donations.

“Everybody needs help every now and then,” Gray said. “Everyone gets busy and things happen. When someone can come in and do a free work and not want anything in return, they are just wanting that person to feel loved.”

Gray explained that the type of love that the church was aiming to show is called “agape” love.

“Agape love is the actual love where it doesn’t want anything back,” Gray said. “When you get ahold of the love of Jesus, you want to spread that out to other people. We didn’t want anything in return. It was just love.”

Gray said that Serve Day doesn’t have to be one day of the year. People can love others and spread the love of Jesus any day at any time of the year.

“I hope that it sparks everyone else to do the same thing,” Gray said. “It isn’t anything that has to be done once a year. It can be done every single weekend. If the whole community could get together and do something like this all the time, you can only imagine what would happen.”