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Sturdy walls. Front porch steps. A
bathroom sink. A home provides the backdrop to life — the structure that
quietly keeps its inhabitants safe and dry, cool or warm. It’s easy to forget
all the comforts a house provides, until it is gone.
Some 850 teens from around the Diocese
of Arlington traded the familiar surroundings of their own homes for a
classroom floor, a communal bathroom and a school cafeteria. From their home
base at King George High School, half an hour east of Fredericksburg, they
traveled out to 110 homes that needed a little fixing up June 24-28. The annual
WorkCamp is run by the Office of Youth, Campus and Young Adult Ministries and
dozens of volunteers.
Bishop Michael F. Burbidge was scheduled
to attend WorkCamp Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, celebrating Mass for
the teens and adult volunteers.
On Monday, WorkCamp crews consisting of
a handful of teens, an adult leader or two and a contractor began fixing roofs,
installing windows, painting and otherwise improving homes. During lunch, they
took time to prayerfully reflect on their work and chat with the home’s
residents. In the late afternoon, they packed up equipment, drove back to the
high school and hit the showers. After dinner, they played games, sang praise
songs and listened to speaker Steve Angrisano share about his faith. In the
morning, they attended Mass, ate breakfast and started all over again.
It was resident Cynthia Byrd’s second
experience with WorkCamp. Two years ago she watched as a crew built wooden
steps leading to her front and back door. Byrd remembers the exact day 12 years
ago that she moved into her King George mobile home. On July 16 the formerly
homeless woman bought her trailer for $1 from her brother and started to create
a home. Since then, she’s helped raise her six grandchildren in the simple
brown trailer decorated with the sign “Home Sweet Home.”
“We had a ball out here,” said Byrd of
her time with WorkCampers two years ago. “I used to go out there and pray with
them. When they ate lunch behind my trailer, I was right there, asking
questions about God. The young girls were out here working hard. They were just
happy, spirited people.”
This year, the crew is adding new
skirting to her trailer that will better insulate the building. Byrd was out
much of the day sitting on a nearby picnic table, talking with the teens and
entertaining her neighbors, many of whom also had crews working on their homes.
Her six grandchildren played outside. WorkCampers sang “Happy Birthday” to the
youngest, Jerimiah, who turned 3 that day.
“I’m so grateful and so blessed for what
you all are doing for me,” said Byrd. “I’m a single lady on a fixed income,
$260 a month, and I’m making it through. Do you know why I’m making it?” Byrd
pointed to the sky. “He keeps on blessing me. That’s all I got to say.”
Meanwhile, two crews cut wood planks and
drilled them into the frame of a wheelchair ramp at the home of the Bill and
Cheryl Duke, a two-story white house built at least 120 years ago in Caroline
County. The home they’ve lived in together for 51 years was Bill’s childhood
home and the place they raised their two children. Cheryl, who has degenerative
arthritis, had been worried her motorized scooter wheels would get caught in
the expanding holes of the wheelchair ramp. Her husband and his cousin had
repaired the ramp in the past but aren’t able to this time.
“(Bill and I are) both almost 75 and
he’s had two rounds of life-threatening pulmonary embolisms in the past three
years,” said Cheryl. “Bill has always been a caregiver. He was an only child
and he took care of his mother for 25 years. This is why this is such a
blessing to get this done because Bill is not physically capable of doing it
anymore.”
Cheryl and Bill are still caretakers of
their adult son, Paul, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. For several years,
he’s been dependent on a ventilator and a feeding tube. But before that, Paul
and his family traveled around the country advocating for people with
disabilities. Though these days he’s mostly bedbound, Cheryl hopes they can use
the new ramp to bring Paul outdoors now and then.
“I think it’s so unselfish of these
young people,” she said. “It’s summer vacation and they’re here doing something
for someone they don’t even know. This is just such a blessing.”
Molly Hoyle,16, a parishioner of Christ the Redeemer Church in Sterling, drills into a wheelchair ramp.
ZOEY MARAIST | CATHOLIC HERALD
Contractor Benjamin Paczak’s first time
at WorkCamp was in 2008 when, as a camper, he and his crew fixed up a men’s homeless
shelter. In 2016, the parishioner of the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in
Arlington came back as an adult volunteer and has volunteered ever since. Paczak
says he most enjoys leading the teens to God.
During adoration one night, Paczak
listened as the high schoolers told their personal, heartfelt rosary intentions
to hundreds of their peers while he directed the confession line. “As soon as
the line was over, I was able to kneel down with everybody else and just pour
myself out. I was almost in tears with the whole experience,” he said. “It’s
very touching.”
RJ Peters, a parishioner of St. Jude
Church in Fredericksburg, is also a repeat WorkCamper. The 18-year-old’s first
project was building a wheelchair ramp for an elderly man. She met not only him
but much of his family. “My resident’s son and his kids came, and the son
helped us a lot,” said Peters. “Then during lunch, we would play soccer with
his kids. We got to see how much it impacted not just the resident but their
whole family and everybody around them.”
Before attending WorkCamp, her main
exposure to Catholicism was the hourlong religious education classes she
attended before her first Communion and confirmation. “My family didn’t go to
Mass a whole lot. We were Christmas and Easter Catholics,” said Peters.
WorkCamp introduced to her other teens
who were passionate about their faith, and showed her the powerful ways
Catholics could serve their communities and evangelize. After getting her
driver’s license, she started driving herself to Sunday Mass.
Peters feels WorkCamp is a hands-on way
to live out her faith. “A lot of the time if you’re praying, even though deep
inside you know it’s working, sometimes it’s really easy to get discouraged if
you don’t see an immediate response,” she said. “So it’s really rewarding to go
through the week and have a tangible product — to see what work you’ve done and
how God has worked through you.”
