Hesston College students embark on volunteer adventures

Hesston College students who volunteered in Louisiana and Mississippi during spring break in March returned to campus with new skills, friendships and cross-cultural experiences.

Russ Gaeddert, director of the Disaster Management Program, and campus pastor Kevin Wilder took seven students to Cameron, La., to work with Mennonite Disaster Service as the long-term volunteers wind up their work in an area near the Texas border hit by Hurricane Rita in September 2005.

Molly Baker, Independence, Ore.; Naomi Blosser, Goshen, Ind.; Josh Boese, of Lehigh; Sidney De Coster, Keerbergen, Belgium; Ben Jantzi, Salatiga, Indonesia; Ana Maria Rojas, Tulua, Colombia; and Heather Yoder, Bellefontaine, Ohio, went to Louisiana.

Another four students--Katie Anderson and Rebecca Bender of Hesston; Hannah Titus, Roland, Iowa; and Meridith Weaver, Akron, Pa., accompanied by Alaina Kaufman, softball coach who works in the college’s Coaching for Success program, volunteered at Pine Lake Fellowship Camp. The Gulf States Mennonite Conference owns the camp in Meridian, Miss.

It was the first time for the students to visit these southern states.

Kansas disaster service provided a van and the gas for the 15-hour drive to Cameron. La.

The college volunteers worked with long-term service volunteers Carl and Lauri Dube, of Michigan, and with nine volunteers from Ontario.

They stayed in service mobile homes.

Volunteers rose at 6 a.m., ate breakfast and had devotions together, packed sack lunches and headed to their work sites. They returned at 5 p.m.

One crew built decks for two homes, including a wheelchair-accessible ramp for one of them. Another crew painted, sheet-rocked and did floor and roof repair on several homes damaged by Rita.

Although service is leaving this project site, Gaeddert said he saw quite a few houses still needing repair.

Not all the students had carpentry skills before they went.

“I didn’t know anything, (but) MDS leaders kind of took you under their wing and taught us,” Baker said.

Listening to the stories of the people they went to help was a highlight for students.

“The people were really warm and accepting,” Jantzi said.

“It was cool to talk to the people we were working for,” Baker said. A woman who showed her a book of hurricane pictures of her community “seemed so positive” about life.

Jantzi was fascinated by the story of Starks Johnson, whose house had been lifted and moved by the water from the hurricane so it was no longer habitable.

Johnson and his wife now are living in a doublewide mobile home.

“The hospitality (of the Johnsons) was as southern-friendly as they come. And the gratitude that we all got out of that was larger then any of us could imagine.

“Just last night (about two weeks after the service trip), we got a letter from the person we built the deck for once again thanking us for our ‘services’,” De Coster said.

Getting to know their classmates in a different setting was a positive outcome of the service trips. “I learned how to work with my friends,” Bender said.

The Mississippi volunteers stayed in a mobile home at the camp and did most of their own cooking.

Their work included laying asphalt on trails, a lot of raking leaves, cleaning under a swinging bridge, and painting and cleaning cabins to help get the camp ready for summer campers. They worked with camp directors, Jeff and Cheryl Landis.

The students tried out kayaks and canoes at Pine Lake, participated in a Bible study at Jubilee Mennonite Church and enjoyed a fish fry in Meridian.

On their way to the camp, they toured the French Quarter in New Orleans.

The Louisiana volunteers visited a beach on the Gulf Coast, took a ferry across an inlet, ate jambalaya and saw alligators at a nature preserve.

Nevertheless, it was the opportunity to serve others that led students, like Baker, to say, “I would definitely do it again.”

“Even our smallest efforts can make a big impact on people,” Bender said.

“At first, honestly, it was more of a place to go for spring break, but this trip turned out to be so much more,” De Coster said. “First of all the area is fabulous. On top of that, we had some sunshine and came back to school with a tan. But even that does not describe the experience that all of us had.”

“Who knew that helping other people would also be helping yourself in many ways?” De Coster said. “Not only did we feel like we had accomplished something, we felt rewarded in our own way. We all had a little more knowledge on teamwork and some of us became familiar with heavy machinery.

“Turns out, it wasn’t just a trip away from the college for break, but rather a trip that brought us closer to what really matters in this world,” she said.