MOSES LAKE — “Acts of love.”

That’s what Pastor Art Brown of Light of Larson Church calls this work of cleaning up his neighborhood, mowing grass, painting fences, greeting neighbors and just spending time with the lost the and the lonely.

“It’s easy to sit and read the Bible,” Brown told a small group of 11th-graders from Moses Lake Christian Academy in the early morning sun on Wednesday. “But it’s tough to get up early, go out, and do acts of love.”

The group of 11th-graders were out at Doolittle Park in the Larsen community, what was Air Force family housing long ago, to help Brown clean the neighborhood up.

And show a little to love to the neighbors.

“Well, this is just who we are, we try to get out into the community as much as we can,” said Stephanie Voigt, director of Moses Lake Christian Academy. “The 10th-graders and the 12th-graders were all taking tests, so we decided to get the 11th-graders out.”

So out they went, the boys to mow, rake, paint, pickup trash and pull weeds around the Larsen community, the girls to the Lakeview Home Care to spend time with residents painting nails, listening and talking, and helping with crafts.

Brown, who arrived in the Larson community to found the church three years ago, said his congregation tries hard to visit neighbors, pick up trash, old furniture, and paint over any graffiti within 24 hours of its appearance.

“It’s not that we have to do this, but we do it because we want to,” he said.

During their couple hours of morning work, Larsen said they collected about 20 large contractor bags of trash, debris, and tumbleweeds.

“I tell [the kids] they can do these same things in their own neighborhood,” Brown said.

“Any time we can get together with other groups to help, it shows we care,” he added. “It takes everybody working together, in all of Moses Lake.”