Volunteers from Khalsa Aid at the Thalavady St John’s Marathoma Church
While the Sikh volunteers from Khalsa Aid continue to prepare Guru ka Langar (community kitchen) and serve over 13,000 meals a day in flood-hit Kerala, a team of around fourteen of them have come forward to clean up a church in Alleppey.
Only after the cleanup, which took two days to complete, locals were able to offer Sunday prayers at the Thalavady St John’s Marathoma Church at Neerattupuram in Alleppey.
The church premises was filled with slush from the floodwaters, making it inaccessible to the public.
Khalsa aid volunteers
“The local Christian community was unable to offer their Sunday Prayers as the church was filled with water and people were unable to access it. They requested our volunteers to clean the church for the Sunday mass. Our team sprung into action and cleaned the church in two days so that the community could offer prayers without any hurdles. They were overwhelmed by the dedication of our volunteers,” said Amarpreet Singh, Asia Pacific managing director for Khalsa Aid to The Indian Express.
Gurpreet Singh, a volunteer from Patiala, said, “It took us two days to clean the whole church. We completed the work on Saturday and it felt very satisfying when people were able to do their Sunday prayers in the church. A message of humanity and communal harmony was given by our volunteers in these testing times for Kerala.”
Currently, a team of 22 volunteers of Khalsa Aid is in Kerala for relief operations and providing fresh hot meals in several camps.