Thousands of World Changers impact state, nation, world this summer

If you’ve got a good crew, it’s amazing what 10 or 11 people can do in a day’s time.”
   
Sid Nichols, director of missions for Calhoun Baptist Association, saw his words come true July 15–22 when about 250 youth and youth leaders rolled into Anniston for World Changers 2006.
   
Divided into 21 crews, volunteers from several states — including some from Alabama — reroofed houses, replaced flooring, built decks and porches, painted interiors and exteriors of homes and put up vinyl siding.
   
One crew even rebuilt a storage shed for the Anniston campus of Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes & Family Ministries.
   
“Usually they do roofs but this year, it was much more of a decoupage of projects than ever before,” Nichols said. 
   
World Changers has stopped for a week in Anniston each year for eight years, and “each time we work on one of these homes, we hope we touch someone,” he explained.
   
And they did touch those they helped — such as Frances Morris, a member of Calvary Baptist Church, Oxford, who had her storage shed and deck torn down and rebuilt.
   
“They were both falling in — it was really bad. But these workers are a dedicated bunch, and they are doing a splendid job,” Morris said. “I enjoyed them being here. They are a sweet bunch of people.”
   
One teen on a roofing crew in a low-income area also led 10 children to the Lord, kneeling with them on the sidewalk a block or so from the job site.
   
“That’s what it’s all about. For those youth who come from other states, this is their Judea or Samaria, but for us, this is our Jerusalem,” Nichols said.
   
The rest of the Baptists in his “Jerusalem” were happy to help the cause, too.
   
“If you add the local volunteers to the ones from out of town, probably 500–700 people were involved in this project,” Nichols said. “It took an army of volunteers.”
   
Local churches each adopted one of the 21 crews, providing lunch for crew members each day at their job site. 
   
Volunteers from the churches also cleaned the two shower trailers — provided by the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions and the North American Mission Board (NAMB) — while the crews were out on the job sites.
   
Groups of volunteers — including Nichols — ran routes between job sites with coolers, providing those working in the sweltering heat with popsicles throughout the day. 
   
“They light up when they see the popsicles,” he said. “It keeps them refreshed and encouraged.”
   
From having 2,500 popsicles on hand for volunteers to having portable bathrooms on each job site, the week took an enormous amount of preparation.
   
But John Thomas, Calhoun Association’s associate director of missions and World Changers project coordinator, said it’s all worth it.
   
“It’s not about finishing the project; it’s about letting these kids have a positive missions experience,” he said. 
   
The Anniston event and a project running simultaneously in Mobile were the last two of eight World Changers projects that took place at six Alabama sites.
   
Beginning June 10 and scattered throughout June and July, crews converged three weeks on Birmingham and one week each on Talladega, Huntsville and Lanett in addition to Anniston and Mobile.
   
Churches in each area hosted crews in a similar fashion to those in the Anniston area. 
   
And church members like Gypsy Mahaffey of Brownsboro Baptist Church in Madison Baptist Association said they were happy to do it.
   
“We fed them for a week, and God blessed us in so many ways,” she said of her experience with the Huntsville project. “We saw this as an opportunity for our youth (as local volunteers) to get involved with others their own age and see how God can use them in His work.”
   
When Mahaffey first went to meet her adopted crew at the high school where the youth were staying, “the atmosphere was wonderful — you could feel God’s presence even in all that noise,” she said, referring to the more than 300 youth all chatting simultaneously.
   
After meeting her crew, they went to Sunday School and church at Brownsboro Baptist with her and then to the job site where they would spend the week working.
   
“The reverence with which they handled themselves was remarkable. They could not wait to start going door to door telling others about Jesus,” Mahaffey said.
   
And while many youth from other states were pouring into Alabama, lots of Alabama’s youth, in turn, were helping out in other states.
   
Three weeks before Anniston World Changers crews worked in the neighborhoods surrounding Coldwater Baptist Church, Oxford, six youth from the church gave a week’s worth of work to restore homes in Maryville, Tenn.
   
“The reason World Changers has been so successful over 17 years — and the reason God has blessed it — is because we have been laser-focused on trying to transform the lives of students,” said John W. Bailey, World Changers coordinator for NAMB. “This is the only way to change the world — to challenge the kids to go beyond their comfort zones, cross barriers and make a difference.”
   
This year’s World Changers had 22,000 youth volunteers committed to 92 projects across the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada, according to Bailey.