Workfest 2009: We're Back!

We're back! The University of Saint Francis Fort Wayne team just returned from our mission trip to Eastern Kentucky. We were part of Workfest 2009. We were sponsored by Campus Ministry. Workfest is one of many programs that are part of Christian Appalachian Project. We stayed at Camp Caleb which is right outside Flat Gap Kentucky.

We had a great experience. There were students from seven different colleges and universities. They came from Michigan, Indiana, Florida, Connecticut, Maine and Washington D.C. The students made up a diverse group including students from Malaysia and France.

We worked on homes from all over the area. Workfest is a time of intense free labor, a time of fixing up the homes of “in need” home owners in the Eastern Kentucky part of Appalachia. Our jobs are to be servants and to learn from the families we work with. The students were broken up into various teams that reflected ability not school of origin. The students worked in the hills, hollers and towns. Some of us replaced windows, doors and roofs others demolished homes and rebuilt them.

We prayed together, ate together, danced together and sang together. Mostly, we laughed together and sometimes we shed a tear. It was a time of intense labor but also a time of intense emotion and focus.

We experienced so much over a short period of time. The weather began with rain, changed to a sunny 78 degrees and ended in a beautiful snow fall. Our Saint Francis team bonded. We were a diverse and wonderful group of people, I like us very much! We thought about USF often and were grateful to Campus Ministry and especially Jan Paterson our director for making this trip a reality. Over the next couple of weeks I will be writing about Workfest 2009. I will have photos of the trip and hopefully some video clips. I will also welcome contributions (articles/journal entries/musings) from fellow Workfest attendees.

So, as we say, after breakfast and morning devotions, “GO WORKFEST”