In 2017, a desire emerged to plant some SYCAMORE Trees on Joy Christian Center’s Campus (our home church). We figured this would be an incredible point of reference that would show how SYCAMORE started out as a seed and ended up growing into a movement.
The challenge, is that Central Minnesota doesn’t naturally have sycamore trees. On top of that, the northern climate isn’t really a suitable atmosphere for sycamore trees to grow.
This didn’t stop us. Here’s the story of 3 sycamore trees that then became 2 sycamore trees that almost was only 1.
In 2017, a desire emerged to plant some SYCAMORE Trees on Joy Christian Center’s Campus (our home church). We figured this would be an incredible point of reference that would show how SYCAMORE started out as a seed and ended up growing into a movement.
The challenge, is that Central Minnesota doesn’t naturally have sycamore trees. On top of that, the northern climate isn’t really a suitable atmosphere for sycamore trees to grow.
This didn’t stop us. Here’s the story of 3 sycamore trees that then became 2 sycamore trees that almost was only 1.
In late 2017, a student while on vacation at his grandparents in Southern Illinois, told them about SYCAMORE. The grandparents just happened to have sycamore trees on their property and thought they might be able to us. They actually then went out into their backyard and uprooted three sycamore tree saplings to bring up to Minnesota.
The largest of the 3 trees was put into one bucket. The two smaller trees were placed together in the second bucket and then prepared for a road trip.
The trees were then transported in two buckets for the 12+ hour drive from Southern Illinois to Central Minnesota. When they arrived we really didn’t know what to do with them. They obviously couldn’t stay inside the church building. So we put them in a nursery to go through the 2017-18 winter season.
Whether they would survive or not was still in question. But they were in excellent hands and now we just waited.
Meaning behind the name:
Jericho is the city where the story of Zacchaeus (who climbed the Sycamore Tree to see Jesus) took place.
Meaning behind the name:
He was nearly uprooted & thrown away due to showing no signs of life. After moving some mulch at his base we found live branches & leaves. Phoenix is now over 6ft tall.
