St. James and the computer

In my travels yesterday, I happened to drive by St. James Episcopal Church in Independence, Iowa. I noticed a sign saying that they had a computer center with free internet open from 2-5 every weekday afternoon. I jotted that fact down in my mental notebook and continued on with my day.

Well in the afternoon, I was driving back home and was going close to Independence so I decided to swing by and check this computer center out for myself. It is a rather simple affair, five computers in their parish hall and all of them had someone working on it. I spoke with the church member that was monitoring the center and she said that it had been open for a couple of weeks and had been getting more people every day that they were open. The reason that they decided to do this is that they are very close to the city library that is being closed because the library is moving to a new, more spacious building. However, the new building is quite a ways away from the current building and the people who have a tendency to use the computer services in the library tend to be disadvantaged and live within a four block area of the current library. Traveling to the new library would be difficult, especially in the winter. So the congregation decided to open up this center to help out their neighbors. In the hour that I was there, a total of seven people came and went using the computers to check email, apply for jobs, type correspondence, or just to surf the web for awhile.

I really compliment the St. James congregation for doing this outreach to the community. May we all have this attitude and forethought to help our neighbors.

Grace to all.

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Cany said…
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August 23, 2008 at 2:01 PM
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