In its efforts to maintain the cleanliness of its host communities, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint recently embarked on trees and flowers planting, clearing of bushes, cutting of grasses, evacuating of debris, opening of blocked gutters and drainage and cleaning of various public and private establishment and Institutions in Calabarand its environs.
Flagging off the exercise which attracted prominent members of the Church estimated at over 3000, across the state, the Stake President, Calabar Stake of Zion, President Victor Bassey said every year the Church designed the program in Africa West to render help in terms of working in all areas of human endeavours, it could be sanitation, bush clearing, construction, repairs and maintenance of structures amongst others.
“We do this annually and in partnership with the host communities because we believe we are all one and we suppose to be working together, it is the way of showing the communities that we appreciate their hosting nature and that is why we are here today. It is not a new thing, we have been doing it. As we are here, other unit of the Church are elsewhere, we have some at Polyclinic, Police Training
School, Odukpani, Infectious Disease Hospital, Markets and other places. We are scattered round Calabar and everybody is working to keep the place clean and give it a sense of belonging”
He said the Church is a restored church, it has unique features. “Firstly, it has priesthood. This distinguished us from many other churches. Secondly, it is the only church that has Temples where living ordinances are carried out. Thirdly, we have a living prophet and fourthly, we have a Book of Mormon which is another testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. These are some of the features that keep the Church different from other denominations”.
The Stake Public Affairs Director, Mrs. Franca Arong Odock said there are about five more locations across the stake. “Here is Mobile Police Headquarters, Squadron Eleven in Calabar. This is where two wards, wards two and seven are working explaining that the benefit of the program is to help the host communities of the Church to have the physical impact of the Church in their mix, it help us to build bridges, bring us closer to the people. If these things are not done and we kept on talking about spiritual, it is not just spiritual that people depend on. The spiritual has to be back-up with physical assistance and it is a friendship kind of program”
In Calabar stake, the program has been on in the past five years, the Church had work in Ndidem’s Palace, Obong’s palace, State Police Headquarters, Ministry of Information, Cultural Centre, State Library, University of Calabar, and we also work in various Police Stations across the state and some markets places in Calabar and many more sites.

She said, “We only lead and others follow. If you remember during the time of Governor Donald Duke, we were the first Church to be awarded a certificate for cleanliness and for adding beauty to Calabar and since then we have maintain that standard. I was the Public Affairs Director; I received that certificate on behalf of the Church. And since then, you could see the revolutions in churches. Many Churches
are planting flowers, others are demolishing their arcades building and building new ones”

“Even in dressing, they have started copying the Church. Every young men are wearing shirt and tie, trying to dress neat rather than the Babariga that they use to be there, so I know that the Church has been having an impact, even this project we have carried out, in the shortest possible time, you will see that many more churches are going to emulate us and do this to benefit the communities, we tried to pass
on the message, some people are still sceptical and we know as they are imbibing other things that the Church has done, I am sure that in due time, they will imbibe the gospel”

Commending the Church for work weldone, the second in command who represented the Squadron Commander,  MOPOL 11, the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Mr. Tony Inaboghuma said “I so much appreciate the work the church has done. On behalf of the Squadron Commander, who is on leave, I want to express my gratitude to the Church. I have not seen this kind of work before being done by organization or church”

“Initially, we thought it was a child’s play but when we started seeing the level of work, we were shocked and surprise. If other churches do the same, we should not have had any problem. Anybody that comes here will see the nice work done by the Church,” he stated.