What do get when you take 47 Roanoke teenagers to Lancaster, Pennsylvania for a week of hard labor?
According to Beth Derringer, an adult leader with Catholic Heart Work Camp (CHWC), “a very positive experience.”
The week-long work camp event is held every summer in select cities across the nation. Catholic teenagers from the Roanoke Valley are given a chance to put their hands and hearts to work by volunteering for projects to help people in another part of the country.
Volunteers work daily from 6:00 am to 5:00 pm, completing projects such as house painting and mulching, as well as more complex work, like repairing porches, fixing fences, building wheel chair ramps or cutting down and removing thick bush.
The real mission, along with 320 other teenagers and adults from across the country, is to devote their time and energy to serve other people in need.
After each group arrived, the members were split up into work teams comprised of kids from different states. In addition to work detail at an assigned location, each teen member was given a leadership role to fill in their own group during the week. These roles included preparation of lunches, work leader, prayer leader, discussion leader, and tool and supply coordinator.
Derringer said, “it was nice to see young people on the team experience and see things in a completely new way and learn to work in steps as a team.”
Elizabeth Thompson, a parishioner at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Salem, said that it was a joy to get to know the residents they worked for.
“A very nice woman who was confined to a wheel chair at the second house we worked on started crying when she came out to see us again one day. She said it was nice to still see good young people around and that she could never repay us for our work… but that we would always be in her heart,” Thompson said.
Evenings were filled with programs and activities to refuel camper spirits and rekindle their faith, including skits, music, worship, testimonials and an exercise called “Four Corners,” where campers were led outdoors with candles and left to pray with each other.
However, the focus came back each morning to the work at hand for that day.
Dan Lieber, adult co-coordinator said, “My wife Nikki’s team was at a day camp called United Support Group, where for six weeks they teach young autistic and Down’s Syndrome children to do basic things like wash their hands by themselves. We’re here to help programs like that.”
As the week ended and all the projects were completed, campers were rewarded with a free day. Their destination: Hershey Park, a theme park where they had a chance to relax, ride roller coasters, have fun and act like teenagers…before heading back to Roanoke.
