Photo Caption: Collin Cornett of Minneapolis, Minn., and a team of young Catholics paint the interior of the parish center at St. Mary Parish in Champaign as part of their Catholic HEART Workcamp experience.

By: By Tom Dermody

CHAMPAIGN — As Jazmin Butzin cleared trays of dirty lunch dishes for guests at the Daily Bread Soup Kitchen here on July 10, the senior at Mahomet-Seymour High School was also growing closer to God.

“Each day is different,” said Jazmin, who in the past week had also helped welcome and serve the guests as well as clean the facility in downtown Champaign.

Jazmin was among 200 young people from six states who spent July 7-13 doing service projects, celebrating their faith, and making new friends during a Catholic HEART Workcamp hosted at The High School of Saint Thomas More.

Twenty-six of the campers were from Our Lady of the Lake Parish in Mahomet, which is also the parish of camp co-managers Mickey and Tony Nickrent.

“We believe in serving the people of God,” said Mickey, in her sixth year of coordinating a Catholic HEART (Helping Everyone Attain Repairs Today) Workcamp in Champaign. Like all members of the leadership team, she was wearing a t-shirt with a quote from Pope Francis emblazoned in tall, bold letters:

“True power is service.”

FAITH PUT INTO PRACTICE
The workcamps are powerful places, energized by youthful enthusiasm and fueled by Catholic teaching.

“Any time you can have young people acting on their faith, that’s profound,” said Father Geoff Rose, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales from Michigan who for the second consecutive year served as director of the Champaign camp. “We can teach kids things in catechesis, but until it is put into practice it is out of balance.”

Faith is put into practice around-the-clock at Catholic HEART Workcamps, which are now hosted in 53 cities across the U.S. and draw 13,000 participants, most of high school age.

Usually, participants travel outside their regions to gain new experiences and perspectives. For example, last month 57 teens and adults from Blessed Sacrament Parish in Morton trekked to a camp in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., where they assisted at several different social service agencies and individual residences.

The youth group from St. Mary Parish in Metamora, meanwhile, took part in a Catholic HEART Workcamp in Louisville, Ky. It was the third mission trip for Brooke Ahrens, 17. This year she served at St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Charities in Louisville, and the work of Brooke and her team allowed the facility to open 10 more rooms for mothers and young pregnant women.

“BETTER THAN I HAD IMAGINED:
At the Champaign camp, participants and chaperones slept in classrooms at the high school — the girls on the second floor and the boys on the first. After 6:15 a.m. wake-up calls, they attended morning Mass in the school gym. Divided into 48 working groups, they then set off for one of nearly 100 different sites, where they shared the love of Christ as they volunteered their labor for those in need — cleaning, painting, building, serving — until mid-afternoon.

Following dinner, evening programs are filled with music, praise, team reports, and more encounters with their faith.

For Emma Cary, a first-time participant from Dublin, Ohio, the week was “better than I had imagined.” She especially cited a Wednesday night experience of adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

“I’ve never felt that way,” she told The Catholic Post. “I felt like God was with us in the gym.”

Powerful experiences of God in sacrament and in neighbor are common during workcamps, said Father Rose, who has been involved in the program since 2003. This summer he will take part in four camps, including one in Knoxville, Tenn., and two in Charleston, S.C.

“It’s no surprise they will have an encounter of faith,” he said. While participants come from diverse backgrounds and locations, they share a common desire to serve, he said.

“You see Christ in everyone,” said Ann Parvey, an adult leader among the 36 who came to Champaign from St. Joseph Parish in Waconia, Minn. The teens get close not only to one another, but those they serve, she said.

“It can be a tear-jerker for them to leave.”

Most campers took part in fundraisers in their home communities — from bake sales to raffles to bagging groceries — to pay for their travel expenses. For example, the Morton group that went to Minnesota raised more than $30,000 through various efforts, according to BethAnn Wirth, coordinator of high school faith formation at Blessed Sacrament Parish.

Asked what he will tell his friends back home about his experience, first-time camper Collin Cornett from Minneapolis had a ready answer while helping to paint the interior of the Oscar Romero Parish Center at St. Mary Parish in Champaign.

“I would tell them to come,” he said, saying his favorite part has been meeting new friends.

Two friends to all the campers in Champaign were women in their 70s who accompanied groups from Kansas and Minnesota. The helped with meal preparation for the 200 participants, but what made a lasting impression on Mickey Nickrent was their time spent in another area of the school.

“I learned they prayed in the chapel for three hours straight on Monday,” said Mickey, who is as familiar with the power of prayer as the power of service. “No wonder Monday went so well!”

For more information, visit the Catholic HEART Workcamp site.