YouthWorks 2011

SD, KY Youthworks Volunteers - Day 2

As a part of the small community of Murray Kentucky, we don’t have anything similar to the Benton House. What the Benton House does for their community is amazing. I would love to care for my community in the way that they do. By the end of our work day yesterday, I could only imagine the miraculous difference there will be by the end of our week.

Day two at the Benton House has been great. Although the weather is warm, we haven’t let it slow us down one bit.Our missions today have included cleaning the community garden, helping with the Golden Diners, and creating a vigorous learning area in the music and computer technology room.

With the 94 degree weather, working in the garden has definitely been an adventure. A small part of the main group pulled weeds and cleared the flower beds. There is definitely a visible difference. I personally cannot wait until everything is complete because the garden will be beautiful.

The music room has been a complete transformation. It began has a room full of costumes, instruments, and who knows what else. But now, it has become a room that I know children will love to spend time in. During prayer last night, my youth group discussed how music is an easy communication tool that God has given to us. To have a safe environment where children can learn about music is such a blessing.

The computer technology room didn’t begin as a huge project; however, two older boys have worked in it today to create a healthier learning environment. The organization they created will help make the learning process easier. In the Golden Diners Program, two young ladies worked with the elders who came today. They discussed our mission trip and why they felt led to work here, which is a subtle way to share our faith as young Christians.

By the end of our week, I believe the Benton House will be miles further in their path of becoming their highest potential. With these updates and pictures, I hope it is easy to see what the Benton House has in store for this community.

-Tori


NOTE: Throughout this summer, various Youthworks volunteer groups from around the country will each be committing a week of service to Benton House and its mission in the Bridgeport community.  They will be providing daily updates/thoughts on their work on their service.

SD, KY Youthworks Volunteers - Day 3

Throughout this summer, various Youthworks volunteer groups from around the country will each be committing a week of service to Benton House and its mission in the Bridgeport community. They will be providing daily updates/thoughts on their work on their service. This is their reflection:


It’s day three, and we come to the Benton House a bit reluctant. We were all tired, and tired of all of the jobs, and just ready to be done with our work. This seemed to change pretty quickly. We all got into our rooms and the energy was back in us instantly. Everyone realized that this is such a great way to help out kids in the community, and we all feel very special to be an important part of this great experience. Our work speedometers went from zero and accelerated to a hundred once we realized we were back at the place we love to be a part of.

It has really just hit me that we are the first group that they have had this summer. We are the first group out of the predicted seven to eight more groups they will have, and in only three days we have made a HUGE impact on this building. Day one came, and we saw many different messes that we could only think of as organizational disasters. Things such as a cluster of instruments in a dirty music room with a boring paint job, a yard filled with trees and weeds just waiting for a garden to be placed upon it, a room so full of computer equipment that you can barely walk, a floor filled with dust and overdue for a good cleaning, and a back room with every scrap of junk we thought was in the place.

Day one became day two, day two became day three, and day three became a day where we all really have started to pat ourselves on the back. The features of this house have quickly transformed and has become a much more livable and delightful place. If we have made this much impact in three of our four days we have here, then I wonder the possibilities available for the other groups who will be coming here. This place will quickly change from great, to tremendous.

We walk in on day one and see this back room filled with many things, needed and unneeded, and we quickly see that something has to be done. This is a project that Ben, one of the administrators of the Benton House, predicted would take about a week. We proved him wrong when we finished this task all in one day. There were still a few shelves in there that needed to be cleaned up and taken into another room, which was finished up during days two and three. It is now an open room, ready for things to be organized into it.

The music room was a great idea. Day two leaves the music room with an unfinished coat of primer, a dirty floor, and a boring look. Day three is just ending and if you were to go in there and see for yourself, you would find that quite a transformation has occurred. The boring, messy, unfinished white has turned into a magnificent, flashy, and cheerful yellow. Transparent slides have been made for use of painting things like music notes and instruments on the wall with a nice deep black paint once the yellow paint is done. The music room is quickly becoming a great learning environment and an amazing place.

The garden area has also made some great progress. Our adult leaders have strained in the heat over this gardening area, and it looks great. Two young ladies of our group have been working on the other area of the garden by pulling weeds. Also tidying up were three other girls from our group who cleaned up the kitchen area, which was quite needed and became quite helpful.

Day three and much progress has been made here at the Benton House. I feel that this place is making a lot of ground, and very quickly. This is a great house with a good environment and a nice idea. I hope it to be very successful in its future endeavors, and when I go home at the end of this trip, I’m sure I’ll check back to the website and think “Wow, I helped make this magnificent place happen”.

SD, KY Youthworks Volunteers- Day 4

It is Thursday and it is the last day the Youthworks team will be at the Benton house. Also with us was a different group of kids from Youthworks who had been working outside all week. They came with us to the Benton House because of the rainy weather. Twin reporters Grace and Emily were on the scene as groups of Youthworks volunteers split up to finish the tasks that we had for the week.

In the Music Room, they finished up with a few last minute touch ups then added music notes and a keyboard stenciled onto the walls and window. Thanks to our hardworking Youthworks volunteers the Music Room is ready for youngsters interested in music. Since the transformation in the Music Room was almost complete, another group of Youthworks volunteers began work on the art room. The walls, which were originally beige and puke green were painted with a clean white primer. Although the art room will not be finished by the time we leave, it will be ready for the next group of Youthworks volunteers to come in and transform it into a beautiful oasis for children who are interested in art.

While there were volunteers hard at work painting the Music Room and Art Room, there were also a group of Youthworks staff and students working hard to clean and organize the garage. “We are in the final stages of transforming the garage into a garage spa” says Stockton, a Youthworks staff member. The garage, which was originally a cluttered unusable mess, has been turned into an organized useful work area, thanks to the hard work and dedication of our amazing Youthworks staff and volunteers.

The Hope Garden, which has been an ongoing project all week long, has finally reached its final stages of intense re-transformation. Yesterday the debris on the ground was cleared, while others reformed the broken path. The next day a large group of brave warriors stormed the castle and removed the heavy pieces of scrap metal still remaining in the undergrowth. Soon the garden will be a beautiful oasis from the hustle and the bustle of city living.

This week that Youthworks spent at the Benton House has been fun and very rewarding. For many volunteers it has been an eyeopener to the city of Chicago. We will all remember the time we spent at the Benton House for many years to come. We are grateful for the opportunity and we will miss working here and the great people who helped us out this week.

~Grace and Emily, Ace Reporters

MN, OH, TX Youthworks - Day 1

Hi, our names are Sarah and Aly. We are from a youth group in Cincinnati, Ohio who has come to Chicago to serve the Benton House. Our youth group is based in Covenant Community Church and we meet every Wednesday night. When we heard our mission trip was located in Chicago, we were thrilled. Most of our youth group members had never been to Chicago and were excited at the prospect of visiting one of the most interesting cities in the world. This will personally be our third Youthworks mission trip, but our church’s fifth. Our mission group here is called the Justice League and consists of three different churches, ours and two others from Texas and Minnesota.















After the tour, the rest of our group went back to laboring in the gardens while we wrote this lovely report. We are so excited to spend the rest of the week at the Benton House and are eager to see how the coming experiences will change our lives.