Church teens learn lessons building homes

Richard Tedesco

For the second straight year, five young members of the East Williston Community Church spent their winter break helping to build houses as part of Habitat for Humanity in the deep south, and the experience is one they won’t forget.

“The kids really had a chance to see what rural poverty looks like. It’s hard on the heart and it’s good to see it while you’re building something,” said Forrest Parkinson, pastor of the East Williston Community Church.

The trip was part of the five church members’ service to the community, which includes raising the money through a play and a dinner the church puts on as well as car washes and the church’s annual pumpkin patch sale.

The point is to work for the opportunity to act on their principles as followers of Christ, Parkinson said.

Parkinson accompanied them on the trip to work on the project, along with Doris Marcisak, who oversees the church’s youth group. The Williston Park Rotary Club also played a key role in funding the trip, Parkinson said.

“It’s all about discipleship,” Parkinson said. “It’s all about training in discipleship.”

This year’s work took place outside Biloxi, Mississippi, in Gulfport.

Having had an introduction to the work from a similar project in Homestead, FL last winter, the three Wheatley School seniors in the group, Kelsey Eckhoff, Michael Marcisak and Jennifer Che, were better equipped to handle a diverse range of construction tasks. Each of them was teamed with a local resident of the area, so they developed friendships with their fellow workers.

“We shared work with them on the site,” Marcisak said.

“They were also very close in age with us so it was easy to relate to them,” Eckhoff said.

Confronting a landscape of hand-to-mouth living, the students gained a new perspective on their own community and the work they were doing.

“Obviously you feel good because of what we did,” said Che. “We kind of live in a bubble in this town. We don’t realize how much poverty there is.”

Realizing that some of the people who would eventually reside in the houses they were helping to build made the young volunteers realize the significance of the work they were doing.

“When you see the homeowners working, you can see the joy,” Marcisak said. “You can see how important it is to work with them.”

He said he plans to organize a Habitat club at Hunter College when he starts his college studies there next year.

The bonus for the young workers was a side trip to New Orleans to see a Mardi Gras parade at the end of the week before they flew home the following day.

“None of them had ever been in the gulf region, so it was a new experience for all of them,” Parkinson said. “Seeing a Mardi Gras parade is a memorable experience.”

Next year, Parkinson hopes to continue the church’s special program of hands-on discipleship with a new group of young parishioners.

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