doing some good work

This past week members of Unity Reformed Church (Muskegon) spent two days working on the Montague land project. The chore that this group engaged in for their semi-local mission trip was to remove invasive species from the land. This preparatory work helps to mitigate the amount of invasive species that find their way back into the soil once the excavation begins…

When will excavation begin? Good question. Currently the permits for digging are in the hands of The Michigan Dept. of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (or EGLE for short). They have been backlogged this year with permit requests, so we patiently wait…

The team from Unity uprooted wild carrot, yarrow, autumn olive, and various thistle. If you walk on by you’ll notice a dramatic change from the week before. A couple of kids from the church’s Cadet program joined in to work towards their ecology badge.

Since the team spent the night at Ferry Memorial Church of Montague they had the unique opportunity to visit the land in the middle of the night. Why visit in the night you might ask? To see bugs, of course! We set up a large projection screen on poles and shined lights on it. This attracted a number of insects that we were then able to identify using apps on our phones. My personal favorite was the plethora of praying mantises to be found…I found 3 in the course of 5 minutes!

Thank you Unity Reformed Church for being part of the redemption of this land. For more info on Unity Reformed Church (shameless plug — I’m the pastor) you can visit www.unityref.com