Cara Spilsbury
May 22, 2007 01:20 pm
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TOPSFIELD | When school resumes in the fall after three months of summertime freedom, there's always a common question: What did you do on your summer vacation?
Many teenagers will talk about the beach, a summer camp, or perhaps a harrowing tale of being stuck in the back seat for hours on a family road trip.
But 25 students from the Topsfield area will have a different story to tell.
They'll spend a week in July rebuilding a neighborhood in New Orleans still in ruins nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina.
The trip is through the Congregational Church of Topsfield. Ten adults will serve as mentors to the students, including youth ministries and missions director Betsy Guest-Natale. Even though the trip is associated with the church, the focus is on helping those in need rather than on religious affiliation.
"It's a good mix of all different kids, with all different ages and abilities," Natale said. "It's a religion-based program, but we have a lot of kids that aren't a part of the church."
To defray the cost of the trip, the group, in collaboration with the church's youth leadership team, presented a concert of local rock bands at the end of March. The teens going to New Orleans were taking tickets at the door and running the show.
Students participating in the Senior High Learning and Serving trip hail from Topsfield, Haverhill, Rowley, Ipswich and Georgetown.
The week of July 8, the teens will spend their nights on the gymnasium floor of a New Orleans church, and their days hammering, drilling and melting in the sticky Bayou heat. But it's all worth it for the students participating, as they eagerly await their adventure.
"I'm really excited," said Michaela Colbert, a 16-year-old sophomore at the Pingree School. "It will be great to help out, and learn more about the country rather than just on television. But I'm also kind of nervous. I don't know what to expect. I've seen all the movies and documentaries about New Orleans, but it will be different in person."
This summer's trip will be the first for the Topsfield resident, but she'll be joined by her older brother, Drew, who is a veteran of two Learning and Serving trips, and her father, Ed, who will be a mentor. The Colberts are members of the Congregational Church of Topsfield.
Michaela's desire to join the church's expedition came after hearing her brother's tales from his trips to Philadelphia and the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
"Because you're going to places not like the Tri-Town area, it opens you up to the world outside if your little corner of Massachusetts," said Drew Colbert, a 17-year-old senior at Masconomet. "I think by meeting people from places that aren't like yours, you get a better perspective of the world. It makes you a more open and understanding person."
Drew's passion for helping others was born through his experiences with the church trips, and he has already continued that work on his own. After Hurricane Katrina struck, Drew raised money for the Red Cross and organized a clothing drive at the church. In just three days, he was able to send two truckloads of clothing to the area. Now, this summer's trip to New Orleans feels like the work has come full circle for Drew, who's slated to attend Colgate University in the fall.
"This is kind of the final step for me, going down (to New Orleans)," he said. "Maybe the clothing I sent down there helped some people. I'm really excited for this new environment. It's going to be different from the past two trips I've been on."
Drew is also looking forward to the manual labor on the trip and how rewarding his efforts will be.
"It's always fun building homes," Drew said. "You're building a place that people are going to call home for 20 some-odd years. You can look back and think, I helped build that home. It's great helping out in other ways, but this has an everlasting physical impact."
Both Michaela and Drew have a certain number of community service hours required by their high schools for graduation. Masconomet requires 40 hours during the course of four years, and the Pingree School asks for 50. That requirement has sparked an unexpected passion for Drew and Michaela.
"It's great helping others, but it really helps you as a person, too," said Michaela. "They really need help, and if you have the time you might as well instead of sitting in front of the TV all day."
Guest-Natale, director of youth ministries and missions at the Topsfield Congregational Church, guarantees that all the students involved in the Learning and Serving trips will be forever touched.
"If you told these kids that they'd have a life-changing experience because of this trip, they'd probably be like, 'Yeah, right,' " Natale said. "But for all of us that go, it's an experience you can't get anywhere else. They're going to carry the experience beyond just that one week in the summer. It's not like going to soccer camp, when after you just go on with your normal activities. It impacts these kids in a way that nothing else can."
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