Teenagers Travel to Help with Housing

By Dan Stone, member of youth group

If I were to ask all 14 teenagers who went on this trip to Eastman, Georgia what their impressions were, all of them would say it was an awesome experience!

It was a long 20-hour drive down to Eastman with three adult drivers; Paul Gannon, Jr., incoming youth ministry director at St. Maryís in Shrewsbury, Evan Cuthbert, current youth ministry director, and Patty McCaffrey, the nurse on our trip. In our two 15-passenger vans, we made frequent stops at gas stations, rest stops, and restaurants.

We arrived full of anticipation for an event most of us had never taken part in before.Eastman is a very rural town located in the central region of Georgia, about two and a half hours from Atlanta, unlike any town outside of Boston. There were long paved roads; houses were widely separated by farms, man-made ponds, and fields of crops.

After getting settled into the newly constructed volunteer center, it was a mere five-minute drive to the site where a proposed 20-house development would be built by Habitat volunteers. Our assignment was to work on two out of the three existing homes-in-progress in the development, following up on the work of 22 high school boys from Chicago.

The first house had air conditioning, so it seemed that everyone wanted to stay in there, considering the 100 degree heat we faced every day. We primed and painted the walls, and scraped and cleaned the floors in preparation for tiles to be laid down. Our work was completed there and all that was left to be done in this ranch-style home was the lighting, install the appliances, and hang the interior doors, all of which will be done by future Habitat volunteers.

The second house was not yet sided, and only the framing existed on the inside. As nice as the air conditioning felt in the first house, most of us seemed to be more enthusiastic about working on the second one in the heat - everyone wanted to sweat and work hard. We hammered, took down boards, and put shingles on the roof.

Staying up every night until 12:30 or 1 in the morning and getting up the next morning at 7 a.m. to work for seven and a half hours was exhausting for all of us, so on our day off, we all wanted to relax. We slept in later than usual, and then headed over to Americas, Georgia, a Habitat for Humanity mock village, which depicted slums in foreign countries. As our walk continued, we were brought into the sharp contrast of middle class homes in these same countries.

The point being, that Habitat can provide suitable housing to deserving families, who no longer need to live in impoverished conditions. My friends and I agreed that our work could really change peoples' lives for the better. Hot and tired, we headed to the highly anticipated Jay Bird Springs, which was a natural spring that we could swim in. Well, to our surprise, this spring fed into a pool. We were all expecting a natural spring where we could jump off rocks into the water, but all in all, we had fun there.

In order to make this trip possible we had to work hard. We put on a car wash as a fund-raiser, and we took donations at Masses. Not to mention that we all put in some of our own money. We give our thanks to everyone in the St. Mary's parish who gave us donations, and to all of the people that gave donations at the car wash, which turned out to be very successful.

Without our three chaperones we couldn't have done any of this. They put in hours and hours of driving, and put up with all of us! Also, weíd like to thank Brother Tom Sheehy, who works for Habitat for Humanity of Dodge County, Georgia.Brother Tom was at the houses every day, instructing us on what to do. Hopefully next year's trip will have the same amount of success that we had this year.

Those who participated in this memorable experience were: Megan Barry; Erin Chatten; Kristin Comeau; Tom Conley; Kara Evans; Elyse Gutenkanst; Will Hetzler; Bridget Keating; Bill Madaus; Ryan McCaffrey; Anne Rocheleau; Tracy Scannell-Keating; Ben Scibelli; and Dan Stone.

For more information on this and future service opportunities, please contact Paul Gannon, Jr. at 508.925.7529.