ARTICLE TOOLS

E-mail story

Comments

Printer friendly version

iPod friendly version

Share This

Text Size: A A A A

Chattanooga: With nails and paintbrushes

By: Clint Cooper
(Contact)

Included in this article

Taylor Arnold of Franklin, N.C., isn’t quite ready to become a building contractor, but she is getting a lot of renovation experience under her belt.

She is one of nearly 400 teenagers who were in Chattanooga last week providing mission work as part of World Changers, an arm of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“It’s always amazing — the amount of loyalty you get to give to God,” said Taylor, 15, who has hung vinyl siding and helped build a deck on four previous trips with the organization. “It’s also instant friends.”

The teenagers, from 15 churches in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia, were divided into 33 crews to refurbish houses and one church.

A second group of teenagers from 13 churches will be formed into 20 crews to do similar work around the area this week.

This is the sixth year the Alpharetta, Ga.-based organization has sent teams to Chattanooga. Around the country, in Puerto Rico, Canada and 20 other countries this year, more than 23,000 students are expected to participate in 95 such projects.

Richard Rea, a member of Red Bank Baptist Church, serves as local project coordinator to handle logistics for World Changers. He works with a construction coordinator who handles building materials and an associational coordinator who organizes lunches for the crews.

“We work as a partnership,” he said.

Front Porch Alliance, a local agency which serves as a liaison among faith-based organizations, other groups and the city to meet community needs, annually solicits applications for the home repairs. World Changers then determines which and how many of the homes its volunteers — who pay $270 for the privilege of working — can do.

Taylor, a member of Cowee Baptist in Franklin, was one of a crew of 11 that made repairs on Emily and Roy Harvey’s Ridgedale home.

In addition to tacking up loose boards and repairing gutters, the teenagers also scraped and painted the retired couple’s home.

“They’re really good,” said Mrs. Harvey, 71, who shared a time of devotion with the group.

The work crew took some bright yellow paint Mrs. Harvey bought, mixed it with some white paint they supplied and applied the light yellow color she wanted to the home.

“It really looks nice,” Mrs. Harvey said. “It looks like the color that was on it.”

The teenagers on the work crew said they chose to go on the one-week trip because they had been on previous World Changers trips or had friends or family members tell them how much they enjoyed the trips they took.

Grant Smith, 16, of Wynne, Ark., and Levi Webster, 14, of Winston-Salem, N.C., said they passed on opportunities to go last year and regretted it when their friends told them about their experience.

“Last night,” Levi said of the group’s daily worship service, “was better than a whole week of camp.”

Comments