To passers-by, Mary Wood may have appeared to be just someone picking weeds Sunday. However, the community service she and hundreds of others performed had a higher purpose.
They were part of Mission JC, an annual event in which local church communities hold "a morning of worship through service." The event comes on the heels of Saturday's Serve Jeff City, a similar annual service-based event.
"I like to come to places where I can see I've made improvement," Wood said. "I think we owe back to the community to show God's love."
As Wood picked invasive henbit weeds at Common Ground, 1015 E. Atchsion St., more than a dozen others at the site prepared raised garden beds for planting. Common Ground is a community service agency dedicated to helping neighbors in the Jefferson City area reach their full potential.
Wood, like some of the others there, were from Living Hope Church. Scott Shaw, the church's director of family ministries, said the church held a service only on Saturday so its members could attend Mission JC.
Ken Luebbering came to Common Ground from Grace Episcopal Church. Seven or eight years ago, he wrote a grant seeking funding to put in a demonstration garden at the site and has been working on it since.
The Common Ground staff gives away vegetables produced by the garden, and people from the neighborhood are encouraged to harvest them on their own.
"I feel like I've been the recipient of so much and so much generosity from all kinds of people in all sorts of places, and it's nice to give something to other people," he said.
At Moreau Heights Elementary School, another Mission JC work site, volunteers were mulching and performing other tasks.
Dulce Stevens, her son Sebastian, and friend Connor Leesman, 8, were repainting the school's sign in front of the building. Sebastian, 12, is a former student at the school.
While Stevens and Sebastian worked at the school, her husband and their other son were doing landscaping for a park as part of Mission JC.
"Our family loves to do Mission JC," Dulce Stevens said. "We've done it for several years, and we just like to be able to put action to our words and go out into the community and say that we really do mean that we are service-minded and we like to support the community and the schools."