wfn.org | Students use spring break to serve needy

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March 4, 2003 News media contact: Linda Green7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn. 
10-31-32-71BPI{120}

NOTE: A map is available with this story.

A UMNS Feature
By Linda Green*

Spring break is normally a time when college students head to beaches and
resorts for a week of revelry, often fueled by an overabundance of alcohol.
But students involved in United Methodist Wesley Foundations and campus
ministry groups will be rolling up their sleeves for service work instead.

Campus ministry groups from across the country will spend their spring break
working side by side with people in need. Instead of fun in the sun, the
students will be working up a sweat swinging hammers, laying bricks, digging
ditches and performing other service work.

"What draws our students into mission-related work during spring break is
their desire to make some tangible difference in the world," says the Rev.
Mark Forrester, director of the Wesley Foundation at Vanderbilt University in
Nashville, Tenn. "This desire, rooted in faith, relates belief with purpose
in practical ways that can be accomplished, valued and shared."

Throughout March, students are building and repairing homes in economically
depressed areas from Appalachia to Guatemala, participating in Habitat for
Humanity projects throughout the United States and in other countries,
teaching children in Mexico and Haiti, performing environmental preservation
in Northern Ireland, ministering at an AIDS hospice in Puerto Rico, holding
seminars in Berlin and working with Methodists in the Bahamas.

The United Methodist campus ministry at the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst is sending 50 students to work in four Southern communities -
Atlanta, Clarksville, Miss., Birmingham, Ala., and Cherokee, N.C.; and in two
closer to home - Holyoke and Mashpee, Mass. 

Since 1997, University of Massachusetts students from different faith
traditions have been engaging in the service projects. "Rather than worship
without sacrifice, what appeals to most of our students is self-giving and
sacrifice as the context for spiritual development and devotion," says Kent
Wiggins of the school's United Christian Foundation.

For the second time, the campus ministry of King Avenue United Methodist
Church in Columbus, Ohio, will depart for Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to partner
with International Child Care, a medical mission organization, to visit urban
community health sites in slum areas. The 11 participants, students at Ohio
State University, will spend time at Grace Children's Hospital, a United
Methodist Advance Project operated by International Child Care, as well as
St. Joseph's Home for Boys.

"Many students do wonderful things on spring break, such as Habitat for
Humanity, Appalachian Service Projects and many others, but there is a
tendency to disengage from the systemic issues of poverty and race that those
sorts of trips are working to combat," says the Rev. Don Wallick, campus
minister and associate pastor at King Avenue Church. "A trip like this, which
lifts students completely out of middle and upper-middle class, sheltered
American life, immerses them in the deep material poverty of Haiti." The trip
will allow the students to engage the people there and to "re-evaluate their
entire life and faith, laying the groundwork for deep personal
transformation," he says.

For the past four years, the chaplain's office at United Methodist-related
Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Mont., has taken students on mission
trips to Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, where they have helped construct a church
and led Bible school. This year, the students will build homes and help with
rebuilding as a result of damage caused by Hurricane Isidore last fall.

The chaplain's office at Wesley College in Dover, Del., is sponsoring a
service trip to the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Ashford, Conn. The Hole in
the Wall Gang Camp serves children with life-threatening illnesses (cancer
and blood diseases such as HIV, sickle-cell anemia and hemophilia) by giving
them a free "normal" summer camp experience. The spring break group from the
United Methodist-related school will help prepare the camp for the children
by doing work projects on the site. At the end of the week, the students will
serve as camp counselors for a campout for brothers and sisters of the
critically ill children.  

Collegiate Challenge

Numerous United Methodist campus ministry groups will join ecumenical
delegations in the Collegiate Challenge, Habitat for Humanity's national
spring break program, in which thousands of U.S. students will visit 200
locations through April 19. The participants will hammer nails and raise
walls as they build simple, decent and affordable houses in partnership with
families in need. The students will travel to rural and inner-city areas of
the United States to build new houses or refurbish existing residences. Other
students will travel overseas to help families in Third World countries
achieve the dream of homeownership.

Twelve students from United Methodist-related Emory & Henry College in Emory,
Va., will journey to Columbus, Ga., as part of Collegiate Challenge, to give
a "hand up instead of a hand out" to families in need," says the Rev. Tim
Kobler, chaplain at the school.   

Students at State University College in New Paltz, N.Y., will answer the
Collegiate Challenge by building houses in Horry County, S.C.

For the first time since the early 1990s, the students involved in the
Tidewater Wesley Foundation and the Wesley Westminster House at Norfolk (Va.)
State College are traveling with students from the Baptist Student Union of
Old Dominion University in Norfolk to Red Bird Mission in Beverly, Ky., for a
week of service and fellowship.

The chaplain and nine students from United Methodist-related University of
Evansville (Ind.) are headed to Gray, W.Va., to make repairs in areas
devastated by floods during summer 2001 and spring 2002. Last year, five
inches of rain fell in less than an hour on six counties in West Virginia and
Virginia, damaging or destroying 3,000 homes. 

A six-student team from the Wesley Foundation at Texas Tech is going to
Louisiana to assist the United Methodist Committee on Relief in helping
victims of the 2002 hurricanes that hit the coast. Another team heads to
Memphis to work for SOS, an inner-city ministry started by Christ United
Methodist Church.

Several Wesley Foundations and ecumenical campus groups will participate in
"Alternative Spring Break," a substance-free break that exposes students to
the diversity of cultures, lifestyles, and living environments in the United
States and South America. Students from across the country will journey to
parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia to work with the
Appalachian Service Project, primarily on home repair.	

The Wesley Foundation students at Radford (Va.) College and Tennessee
Wesleyan College in Athens, Tenn., are going to Marion, Va., to work with
Project Crossroads, an ecumenical building and rebuilding project in rural
southwest Virginia. The students also will speak in local United Methodist
churches to share the Wesley Foundation story and thank congregations for
their financial and moral support.

McCurdy School in Espanola, N.M., is the destination for 18 college students
involved in the United Campus Ministry of the Tri-College in Fargo-Moorhead,
N.D. They will help with service projects - painting, landscaping, cement
work, repairs, spring cleaning - to benefit the children attending the
preparatory school, which is a project of the United Methodist Board of
Global Ministries. The group also will dig out ancient irrigation ditches for
"subsistence farmers" in the area and make repairs at a retreat center, a
community health clinic and hiking trails.

Mission trips abroad

The denomination's Volunteer in Mission Program has enabled students and
others from United Methodist-related Shenandoah University in Winchester,
Va., to participate in a mission trip to Caribbean and Latin American
countries for the past seven years. This year, 21 students will continue the
construction of a parsonage and preschool for the church in San Isidro, Costa
Rica. 

Guatemala is the destination for students of the Wesley Foundations at
Tennessee State and Middle Tennessee State universities. The foundations at
both schools are uniting to take students to complete work on a church at
Chuisamayac. The group will construct pews, paint, install computers and
conduct a Bible school.  

"The challenges of language differences, cultural difference, relationship
building with our hosts and each other, and experiencing a spiritual reason
for what we do make for a powerful week of sweat, inconvenience and love,"
says the Rev. Barry Foster, chaplain and director of church relations at
Shenandoah University. "Students are thrust into an environment where they
are asked to look deep into their Christian faith to see if they are truly
following the Christian path to open blind eyes, bring good news to the poor
and to set oppressed people free."

The Protestant campus ministry at Pennsylvania State in Erie is going to
Northern Ireland to perform service work, including planting trees, pruning
shrubs, and cleaning trails and underbrush at Castle Ward near Downpatrick.

Others traveling abroad include a group from Indiana University, Purdue
University and the Indiana Institute of Technology, all in Fort Wayne, Ind.
The United Methodist representative campus minister is taking the six-member
team to Berlin to lead seminars on youth ministry, creation vs. evolution,
marriage relations, and teens and children. The students will interact with
German Christians and non-Christians, and meet with the one-time American
warden of the prison where Rudolf Hess and other Nazi criminals were held.

"We always take a cross-cultural trip so that the students can be stretched
out of their comfort zone and learn that the world is a much bigger place
than Fort Wayne, Ind.," says Benton Gates, the United Methodist campus
ministry representative to the three Indiana academic institutions.  "We
expect the trip to be a life changer."

Students from the Duke Wesley Fellowship at Duke University, Durham, N.C.
will be joining others organized through Duke Chapel on a mission team to
Honduras. Another student will travel to Uruguay with the Duke Freeman Center
for Jewish Life. The Duke Wesley
Domestic Work Team will stay at Lake Junaluska, N.C., and work in Haywood
County.

Wesley's maxim

Learning and teaching is also on the agenda for 10 students from the San
Antonio United Methodist campus ministry. The students, all interested in
exploring the call to ministry, will tour three United Methodist seminaries:
Candler School of Theology, Atlanta; Duke Divinity, Durham, N.C.; and Perkins
School of Theology, Dallas.

The Wesley Foundation Campus Ministry at the University of Oregon in Eugene
is joining forces with Oregon State University's Westminster House Campus
Ministry in Corvallis, and heading to San Francisco to volunteer in the
dining room of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church for Project Open Hand,
preparing and delivering meals to HIV-positive patients in the community, and
at Cameron House, a mission of the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown.

Oregon State University's campus ministry is an ecumenical effort of United
Methodists, Presbyterians, United Church of Christ and Disciples of Christ.
Nine students chose San Francisco as their destination "because they wanted
to have an urban experience, to learn more about the issues that the poor
face in the city, and to see how churches and social service agencies are
attempting to meet the needs of those who are living on the margins," says
the Rev. Jeremy Hajdu-Paulen, campus pastor at the Wesley Foundation at the
University of Oregon.  "Reflection will be an important part of our
experience as we integrate what we see and do with our own Christian journeys
of faith."

Pearisburg, Va., is the spring break site for nine students of the Ecumenical
Center at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. The group will help build a
Habitat for Humanity house; build a deck for an Adult Day Care facility;
install a merry-go-round at a playground; and help judge a school science
fair. 

Thirty students from United Methodist-related Birmingham-Southern College in
Birmingham, Ala., will travel by train to Washington to work with homeless
programs. They also will meet with their congressional representatives to
discuss homelessness and poverty.

For Forrester at Vanderbilt, the words of Methodism's founder, John Wesley,
relate directly to the students' service projects. Says Forrester: "Wesley's
maxim, 'the world is my parish,' becomes more immediate and real when today's
young people on campus venture out, with faith, and local support in hand, to
share in the transformation of people's lives."

# # #

*Green is United Methodist News Service's Nashville, Tenn., news director.

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United Methodist News Service
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