Spring to serve: College Heights students volunteer in annual missions week
Mar. 18—The second floor of the building is a mess.
Rooms in the old Washington Education Center are filled with dust, dirt and debris from replaced construction materials, old books, furniture and collapsed ceiling tiles. As students from College Heights Christian School picked up Christmas decorations, lights and other things to be moved, they had to be careful in order to avoid injury.
"Right now, we're cleaning all the stuff from upstairs, but then you walk past that middle floor and see what the upstairs is going to become," senior Layne Jackson said. "It's messed up now, but it's going to help a lot of people."
Missions Week continued Wednesday with a stop at the Washington Family Hope Center, a part of Watered Gardens Ministries that helps mothers with children, providing temporary housing. Earlier this week, the students served at Rapha House and Lafayette House. By the end of the week, a group of about 40 students will also have worked at Watered Gardens and God's Resort.
Another group of students will travel to Orlando and New Orleans to work with Youth with a Mission, and a third will travel to Arlington, Texas, to assist Mission Arlington. A fourth group, composed of freshmen, is bound for Ozark, Arkansas.
The week is a spring tradition at the school, with volunteerism taught through action.
Several in the group at Washington had traveled to Mexico last year for the week. Senior Sarah Painter said it was one of the most difficult, yet most rewarding, service projects with which she had ever been involved.
Students reached out to kids with vacation Bible school-style skits, and that would draw their parents out. But the trip was filled with a tremendous number of challenges. "It felt like Satan was trying to stop us," Painter said.
"We were out all day and would stay up late, so it was physically exhausting," Painter said. "It was mentally exhausting because we didn't speak the same kind of Spanish and couldn't understand what they said. We had some really good days, but so many issues came up."
The trip to Mexico taught Painter that she can serve in her community right now, she said — and this week's trip showed her some great places where she could serve.
"I can serve in my community and be a light to others," Painter said. "I can do this by myself. I don't need a group."
Matt Ingle, director of the center, said he appreciated all of the students' work. Big things are planned for the center, including a cleanup and upgrade of its exterior and playground features.
The center can currently accommodate six families. The second floor will feature more rooms like the first floor, however. Ingle said the center would like to begin construction next year.
"But before we start, everything up there has to be out of there," Ingle said. "There are a lot of construction leftovers from the first phase stuck up there, such as old doors, windows and things we took out from downstairs."
Students brought in pallets to protect Christmas decorations in the basement, which floods sometimes. Depending on what they grabbed, they took it either downstairs or out for trash pickup.
The metaphor of working on something wasn't lost on senior Arianna Calandro.
"It reminds me of God's grace," Calandro said. "Upstairs, it's filthy and a mess and represents our sin. ... Down here it's so nice and clean, it looks like a hotel someone paid big bucks to stay at. That's God working. I like being a part of that, even in a tiny way."
