When Covid-19 hit in spring of 2020, Shelia Preston and her fellow church members were concerned about their neighbors.
Embarking on Project Sonshine, they visited the Rye Beach Complex to build relationships with each of the 31 families who live in the mobile home park. Visit after visit, needs were matched with community resources: grocery deliveries, vital home repairs, furniture deliveries, landscaping, and a partnership with local Lemmy’s eatery. The community began co-leading a weekly Bible study that met in the street, where neighbors could socially distance. This, Shelia said, is what the church was being called to in that season: “to do God’s work to reach the people where they might be.”