JOPLIN – World Changers announced they were coming to Joplin late last July. Planners had no idea just how much their help really would be appreciated a year later.
“We had to change a few of the projects and work sites we were planning to do after the [May 22] tornado, but God knew we were going to be here in Joplin a year ago,” said Devan Malone, communication specialist for World Changers.
For the uninitiated, World Changers is an initiative for the North American Mission Board (NAMB) designed to give middle and high school students a taste of missions, specifically through free labor on minor household construction and repairs. Two weeks ago in Joplin, 187 students from churches in Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee gathered to form 16 works crews. They slept at First Baptist Church, Webb City, and tackled projects ranging from roofing and siding, to rebuilding of a porch to dragging undamaged lockers from the ruined locker rooms of Joplin’s heavily damaged East Middle School. Students also helped clear out Memorial Education Center, an undamaged storage and administration facility for the Joplin schools, to make room for students whose regular school site is no more.
Those 187 included 56 students from Missouri representing four churches: Union Southern Baptist Church, Camdenton; First Baptist, Trenton; First Baptist, Poplar Bluff; and Chesterfield Community Church. They are part of more than 20,000 students nationwide working in 85 World Changers cities from Alaska to Puerto Rico, New York to California.
The students sacrificed $250 each for the mission trip, some of them driving upwards of eight hours for the work week. The unrelenting heat added even more to the sacrifices, with temperatures on the roofs topping 120 degrees.
Although First Baptist, Webb City, has plenty of education space to house the students and adult sponsors, the church had no shower facilities. That was a problem, especially when so many were working outside on the hot roofs. That’s where the Spring River Baptist Association and Pisgah Baptist Church (Excelsior Springs) Disaster Relief shower units and volunteers came in, providing 12 showers in two trailers to help keep everyone clean and comfortable.
“It’s been a different kind of World Changers project, but God is using these students to make a difference,” Malone said.
BRIAN KOONCE/staff writer
bkoonce@mobaptist.org