While many students spent the last week of winter break watching television or savoring the last days without an alarm, 50 students flew to Jamaica to build houses and befriend community members.
The annual grassroots mission trip collaborates with Won by One to Jamaica. Henry Shaffer founded the ministry in 1989 after helping with relief from Hurricane Gilbert in the village of Harmons. Groups stay at the ministry’s Harmony House and spend one week volunteering in the community.
The trip is entirely student-coordinated by one male and one female leader. Along with another independent trip taken during spring break, it is loosely affiliated with the campus ministry Veritas, but students do not have to be affiliated with the ministry to apply.
About 40 men and 100 women applied for the trip, which co-leader Kassie Hyde said is an increase from previous years.
Co-leader Cort Rippentrop said he and Hyde had difficulty selecting the trip’s participants.
“It’s different than a job, obviously,” Rippentrop said. “Everyone deserves to go. Everyone should have the opportunity to go.”
Unlike when applying for other student organizations, there is no set of requirements for choosing the volunteers, Hyde said.
“We want a variety of ages and different stages in faith,” she said. “How the team fits together as a whole is more important than what any one team member brings to the group.”
The Harmony House usually caps its number of inhabitants at 50, but it made an exception for MU’s group, Hyde said. Fifty-four students were chosen, an increase from 42 in 2011, but 50 ended up going.
Activities varied each day, with volunteers working alongside different groups of people and on different projects.
As one of the main projects, volunteers built three houses and laid the foundations for three more. Each house, which is about as large as an average-sized bedroom in Columbia, accommodates about five people, participant and Missouri Students Association President Xavier Billingsley said.
Some volunteered in the greenhouse, a project started three years ago that helps the villagers grow crops to sell to the resort industry.
Several students worked with small groups of children or taught lesson plans at local schools.
For half a day, the entire group visited the parish’s infirmary. The establishment serves 130 elderly and disabled people but only employs three workers. The students played music, sang and visited with them, and some of the women even brought nail polish to paint the women’s nails.
“You really can see God in different ways, (like through) how joyful they get when someone sits by them,” Rippentrop said.
All the volunteers gathered Friday to dedicate the houses to the three families for whom they were built.
“It’s a final ending to the work we were doing, to finally see the finished project,” Hyde said.
The group spent Saturday in Ocho Rios before flying back to St. Louis on Sunday. The day helped the group transition back to their everyday lives and allowed time for reflection on the week’s experiences, Rippentrop said.
Hyde, a third-year participant, said she was sad to not be returning next year after having built relationships with many of the villagers, but a worker she had become close with during her first year on the trip gave her some advice.
“He said, ‘As long as you remember us, it doesn’t matter if you come back next year or in 20 years.’ It shows just how much the trip is about relationships as opposed to physical labor,” Hyde said.