Alabama youth find blessing in World Changers

New looks for houses and hearts were the goals of 347 World Changers who scraped peeling paint to replace it with new surfaces in Mobile this summer.
   
With crew names such as “Hard Hats,” “Joint Clamps” and “Plumb Bobs,” the youth ripped and replaced leaky roofs and rotten siding boards for residents who would not be able to afford the work.
   
In doing so, they illustrated how Christ can make damaged lives new.
   
Jack Mason of First Baptist Church, Bay Minette, said he chose to participate in World Changers this year after having been once before. He said that he likes the work and finds it and meeting other youth from the nation a beneficial experience.
   
Mason’s older brother, Joey, was working at the same site.
   
“I feel that God will bless me for this, and it’s pretty awesome that little kids will come up to us from off the street, and we could talk with them,” Joey said.
   
The Mason brothers were joined by other youth from Alabama, as well as from Missouri, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Georgia, according to project coordinator Joe Swan, who is minister of education at First Baptist Church in Satsuma.
   
The Mobile group was among a record 19,245 individuals participating in World Changers missions projects in North America during the summer, an increase of nearly 14 percent over last year’s total.
   
World Changers is a ministry of the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and since 1990 has allowed students to actively live out their faith through rehabilitating substandard housing and participating in other community missions efforts.
   
Most of this year’s 66 projects in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico involved roofing, painting and other repairs on homes — a total of 1,365 work sites.
   
Other projects included a broad array of ministry efforts at 190 sites in association with local churches and other ministry groups.
   
Seventeen youth and eight adults from First Baptist Church, Crossville, traveled to Casper, Wyo., this summer.
   
The group painted, repaired roofs, worked with children and helped nursing home residents, said May Gaines, member of First, Crossville.
   
“Our youth worked so hard this summer, and we were all blessed beyond words,” Gaines said.
   
The Mobile-area World Changers’ activities were coordinated through the Mobile Baptist Association (MBA) and the Mobile Housing Board (MHB).
   
The young people provided free labor, while the MHB picked up the tab for the supplies — about $45,000 worth, according to Hallet McDonough, real estate officer of the housing board. He said the total value of the labor savings was about $135,000.
   
McDonough said the board received 125 applications and the 27 residents were selected from those. Had the labor not been provided, not as many people could have been helped, McDonough said, stressing that volunteer labor makes the grant money the board receives go further.
   
At the home churches of the youth, NAMB requires the teens to do a project on at least one house, preceded by a six-week mission study, prior to being eligible to be a World Changer.
   
City of Mobile-issued building permits are secured for each site and all work is done to meet building codes, according to Clay Lewis, construction coordinator for the World Changer projects in Mobile.
   
“I think it really builds confidence in the volunteers and gives them a broader perspective of how other people may be living — crossing racial, social and economic barriers,” said Lewis, who owns a construction company and is bivocational pastor of Calvert Baptist Church, Calvert.
   
Though most volunteers were from far away, Pastor Roger Perkins of Lockler Memorial Baptist Church, Mount Vernon, was overseeing a roofing project at one of the sites.
   
“This is our Judea — a way we can be involved in world missions,” he said.
   
“I just think it’s awesome that God just brings together all these people from all over the nation to help each other out and to witness for Christ,” said Heather Porter of Flatwoods Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa.
   
The volunteers worked as weather permitted 7 a.m.–4 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and on Wednesday from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m.
   
The Mobile group was the fifth World Changers group to work in Alabama this summer; earlier this summer different groups worked in Huntsville and Anniston and twice in Birmingham.
   
Additionally, 14 International World Changers projects in 10 countries were conducted in association with the International Mission Board.
   
A total of 1,596 professions of faith were recorded during the summer, including 224 from World Changers participants.