worldchangers_71403

Posted: 7/11/03

THEY HAD A HAMMER:
World Changers in Dallas

By Jenny Hartgraves

Staff Writer

DALLAS–If stirring lemonade with a crowbar sounds like summer fun, then World Changers are having the time of their lives–and changing a few too.

More than 760 junior high and high school students from around the nation were hard at work in the Dallas area in late June, repairing houses with the labor of love.

World Changers, sponsored by the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, has been sending students around the world since 1990 to renovate and repair homes in low-income neighborhoods. More than 100,000 student volunteers have participated worldwide, and 23,000 will participate this summer alone.

Cliff Temple Baptist Church in Oak Cliff sponsored 226 youth and adults from six states for the fifth year. Although the main focus is to encourage changed lives and spiritual growth, World Changers is not a typical church camp.

Each morning, crews of 11 to 15 volunteers departed the comfort of Cliff Temple's air-conditioning and ventured to 17 hot roofs in the Dallas area.

Sixteen-year-old Emily Pecoraro, from First Baptist Church of The Colony, has participated in World Changers four years, but this year it was a family effort as she was joined by her sister Loressa, 13, and her father. Attributing each year to new experiences, Pecoraro said her favorite part is “getting to see the smile on the owners' faces.”

Sweating through dirt and sawdust, Pecoraro said she knows plenty about roofing. After completing a project like this last year, she knows that destroying the shingles is much better than hammering her thumb. “At least you can't mess that up,” she said.

Unlike their veteran partner, Jessica Peters and Whitney Johnson, both 16-year-olds from Fairview Baptist Church in Sherman, didn't know a thing about roofing before they arrived at World Changers. Their youth minister told them about World Changers and helped coordinate the youth mission trip for some first-ever manual labor.

“We've done Vacation Bible Schools and gone door-to-door, but we've never done anything like this before,” Peters said.

These girls may be young, but they are serious about sharing their faith and searching for opportunities to meet people.

Youth participants in a World Changers project in Dallas carry roofing materials to the site of a mission project.

“I've gotten to hang out with the family and really see who it is that we're helping,” Johnson said. “I think the greatest thing that can happen is for people in the neighborhood to come up and ask why we're here, and then we can tell them about our mission.”

Since the World Changers have one week to complete a project, the main requirement for choosing a location is time. The time spent in the heat doesn't compare to the time spent in planning, said Walter Mickels, national missionary for NAMB and World Changers coordinator since 1998. Organizing locations and groups can take almost two years, he said.

“Churches and organizations approach us about bringing World Changers to their community, and we work with Dallas city officials and People Helping People to determine the houses which need the most help,” Mickels said. People Helping People is a city program that provides minor home repairs through volunteer services for lower-income, elderly and disabled homeowners.

Along with the NAMB staff, each World Changers location is administered by four college-aged students to keep things running smoothly. Fifteen teams served nationwide this summer. Each team has a leader, office manager, audio/visual coordinator and music leader. The teams work for 10 weeks, traveling to different sites to administer the World Changers program.

The Cliff Temple location was made possible by the efforts of Eddie Rose, project coordinator, Jerry Wascom, construction coordinator, and Mike Wade, Dallas Baptist Association coordinator.

“At World Changers, we concentrate on the students,” Rose said. “To many of the people in these neighborhoods, they're the only Bible that they'll ever see. And when they find out that these kids pay their own money to sleep on the floor and rebuild houses, it makes a big impact.”

At left, the students pose for a group photo with the owner of the home where they worked.Jenny Hartgraves/Standard