Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2010 / Spring break is a time of service for some UDM students
Spring break is a time of service for some UDM students
by Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published March 19, 2010
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Courtesy University of Detroit Mercy
University of Detroit Mercy sophomore Dana Juhlin kneels on one side of the border fence separating the United States and Mexico to talk with a little girl on the Mexican side. The visit was part of her Alternative Spring Break experience. |
DETROIT – For at least 47 University of Detroit Mercy students, this year's spring break was about volunteer service and prayer instead of drinking and getting wild.
Those 47 students took part in Alternative Spring Break activities organized by the university's campus ministry office that took them to six different places around the country to engage in work projects and learn about poverty in the United States.
From March 6 to 13, teams of students helped build houses with Habitat for Humanity in Bay St. Louis, Wis.; worked with Franciscans for the Poor in Cincinnati, Ohio; worked with the Sisters of Mercy to help the hungry and homeless in Sacramento, Calif.; helped rehabilitate a house in Mount Pleasant, S.C.; helped reinforce a trailer home near Salem, W.Va.; or worked at a shelter for immigrants and learned about immigration issues in El Paso, Texas.
This was the 20th year for the ASB program at the university, and involved more participants than in any prior year, said Drew Peters, campus minister at UDM.
Allison Bohn, 20, a junior English and biology major, said her group, on their trip to rural West Virginia, helped make various repairs to rehabilitate, reinforce and insulate a trailer-home and helped salvage some another family's belongings as they helped tear down what was left of a house that had burned down.
"We met the mom and two small kids who lived in the trailer. Also, we visited four schools in the area, and did different repairs," said Bohn, a member of St. Joseph Parish in Trenton.
They visited several towns in the area to see the conditions in which the people live. "It was really an awakening. It made you see everything that we take for granted," she said.
It is an experience Bohn said she would recommend to other students. "I had the feeling I was doing God's work by helping people and trying to put myself in other people's shoes," she added.
Also with the West Virginia group was Shae Burton, 19, a sophomore communications major.
A member of The Way of the Lord is Our Refuge Apostolic Faith Church in Detroit, Burton said the experience was a way to follow a Christian's duty to "remember your brother, by helping these people."
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Courtesy University of Detroit Mercy
UDM sophomore Malinda Killu, a member of St. Alan Parish, Troy, looks across the border fence separating the United States and Mexico at Mexican children on the other side. |
"And they really appreciated it. I think it's really important to do service. It made me appreciate what I have, and want to help those who don't," she said.
Ray Lynem, 18, a freshman nursing major, said going to West Virginia was "fun and a great experience," as well as being a boost to his faith. "I had been asking God to show me some things," he said, adding that there was plenty of time for prayer and reflection in addition to the service projects.
"It left me with a greater sense of appreciation for the simple things, and helped to bring me closer to God," said Lynem, a member of Power, Hope and Grace (Apostolic) Church in Detroit.
Another team of students spent their break in and near El Paso, Texas, in an ASB experience focused on the issues revolving around Mexican immigration at the border. Malinda Killu, 20, a sophomore biochemistry/pre-med major, Angie Drabarek, 19, a freshman health services major, and Dana Juhlin, 19, a sophomore nursing major, were all part of the Texas group.
Killu said she and her fellow students were taken to three places where they had a view into Mexico to provide some perspective. At the first, they were up on a height where they could look on both El Paso and its Mexican neighbor, Ciudad Juarez.
"It helped us realize that, in God's eye, it was one city," said, Killu, a member of St. Alan Parish in Troy.
They also crossed into New Mexico, where they visited two points along the border – one where the U.S. and Mexico were just separated by a row of boulders, and another where the border fence had been erected.
"Kids came up to the other side of the fence, and asked us for gum," Killu said, adding that the students emptied their purses of gum and candy to give them.
Juhlin said they could see through the fence the nearby shacks where the children live, and that some of the shacks appeared to be made largely of cardboard.
"It really made us sad for those kids. We just wanted to pick them up, and take them back with us," said Juhlin, a member of Holy Family Parish in Caledonia, near Grand Rapids.
Drabarek said it was shocking to learn about the "coyotes" who offer to smuggle Mexicans into the United States for a price, then sometimes just abandon them to die in the desert.
"Being a Catholic, and having been raised a Catholic my whole life, I just can't imagine doing that to another human being," said Drabarek, a member of St. Anselm Parish in Dearborn Heights.
The students were also briefed on the situation by a U.S. Border Patrol agent, and they crossed into Mexico one day where they met with a Mexican priest and attorney.
They also visited an El Paso shelter for immigrants.
Phil Trotter, 19, a sophomore business major, was part of the team that went to South Carolina, where he and other students helped rehabilitate a house that had been seriously damaged by termites.
"Most of the people in that area have to get by on from $8,000 to $20,000 a year," he said.
The McNeil family home the students worked on was "falling apart," and the students removed the old floor, installed new floor joists and plywood flooring, said Trotter, a member of Word of Faith Christian International Center in Southfield.
"I think you should take time to help others in need, and that's what we did on this trip," he said.
For Chelsea Anteau, 19, a sophomore biology major, the South Carolina trip was her second ASB experience at UDM, having gone last year to Biloxi, Miss., to help people still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina.
While Trotter and the other young men on the trip worked on the house's floor, she and the other young women painted the new wood that had been put up on the exterior by a previous group of students from another school.
Anteau, a Lutheran from Flat Rock, said her ASB experiences had been eye-opening, because she hadn't previously realized how many people devote their lives to being of service.
"There are people who make the world worse, and there are people who make the world better," she said.
Peters said the ASB program stems from the values that undergird the university. "We're a mission-driven school in the tradition of the Jesuits and the Mercy Sisters," he said.
The program is more than just a wholesome alternative to the raucous carousing that characterizes some American college students' spring breaks. "They serve, they see, they experience, and they bring that back. We are looking for them to be transformed," Peters added.
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