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Community rallies to help Raleigh teen's vision become reality

A team of volunteers spent the weekend helping to surprise a 17-year-old Raleigh boy battling cancer to see his vision of building a prayer garden become a reality.

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RALEIGH, N.C. — A team of volunteers spent the weekend helping a 17-year-old Raleigh boy's vision of building a prayer garden for a local church become a reality.

Noah Spivey, a Boy Scout with Troop 364, began planning and building the garden at Pleasant Grove United Methodist Church as part of an Eagle Scout service project.

But his plans were sidelined after he was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer called Ewing sarcoma.

Now receiving hospice care to relieve the effects of the cancer, he was presented last week with the Heart of the Eagle Award, an honor never before bestowed on a local Boy Scout.

Spivey's story on WRAL News prompted thousands of people to offer donations of time and money to help him realize his vision.

Donations – from benches and birdhouses to statues and stones – poured in from the community.

WRAL-TV and local landscape companies Parker's and Lanarc also jumped in to make the overgrown woodland behind Pleasant Grove church a place of peaceful reflection.

After spending Saturday working all day on the garden, Spivey was surprised Sunday with the unveiling of Noah's Prayer Garden.

"It's wonderful, and it's going to serve a good purpose for the troop," he said. "And above all, a good purpose to God."

Spivey has also asked for those in the community to donate to the Noah D. Spivey Heart of the Eagle Fund, which assists Boy Scouts in need of financial support pay for uniforms and other scout-related needs.

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