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West Valley City Journal

Valley volunteers come together to beautify West Valley City church

Oct 08, 2024 11:34AM ● By Darrell Kirby

Volunteers, including from different religious faiths, paint the exterior of Mount Calvary Family Worship Center in West Valley City. (Darrell Kirby/City Journals)

Their tenets and practices may differ, but that did not keep people of various religious faiths from coming together in service to another in West Valley City. 

Volunteers organized by the Interfaith Council of the My Hometown Initiative of West Valley City gathered on a Saturday in September to paint the exterior of Mount Calvary Family Worship Center at 3050 S.
3200 West. 

The paint job covered up persistent graffiti which has stained the church building for several years now. “We’re excited to come together as a community and help fix that,” said Mark Rupp, a member of the Interfaith Council which has representation from up to 15 different religions in the area.  

The project at Mount Calvary was part of My Hometown’s “Days of Service” in which volunteers repair and clean up homes and other properties in various neighborhoods from April through October. 

“There are designated service projects and people from all over the valley come…and take care of fixing up a fence, cleaning up a yard, painting a structure, and so on,” Rich Irion, associate director of My Hometown in West Valley City, told the West Valley City Journal in August. 

My Hometown Initiative is a consortium of government, faith and civic organizations that contribute financial and material resources to bring a better quality of life on a neighborhood and community level. With meeting space provided in local meetinghouses of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, My Hometown also holds classes to teach people life skills like English as a Second Language, Spanish, sewing, art, piano, choir, dance, yoga, children’s literacy and also sessions on parenting and self-confidence. 

Some 50 volunteers donning orange or yellow vests took paint brushes and other tools in hand to freshen up the nearly 25-year-old building housing Mountain Calvary. “It’s thrilling. It fulfills the dream of people all across the valley coming together for a common cause to help improve and make something better,” Rupp said. 

Mount Calvary pastor Jaime Moreno felt the blessing of watching so many people with no connection to his church take time to beautify it. “We started praying and this is one of our answers to prayers seeing all these people volunteering and working here in our local church,” he said. Moreno added that it will also energize his 200 parishioners. “We love to serve our community. Seeing all these people here working means a lot for us as a church. We don’t want to be just another church in the city. We want to be the church for the city.”

One of the volunteer painters was Zach Burningham of the Draper Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Different congregation, but that’s OK. We’re all brothers and sisters here to help,” he said. “I think it’ll look a lot better when we’re done.” 

And indeed it did. 

The paint was donated by Sherwin-Williams and some current and retired painters offered assistance.  λ