Break chance to mend damage to church

Group of students go to Mississippi, help rebuild church destroyed by arson

Nine Oberlin students watched in awe as a team of 10 bricklayers from New Orleans laid out a wall of St. Pauls Primitive Baptist Church in Lauderdale, Miss.

Harold Confer, director of Washington Quaker Workcamps, told the students - who helped him rebuild St. Pauls during Fall Break - "Never be pompous about having a college education, because these guys can do something you can't."

After sheetrocking and spackling for a week, those who worked with Confer would agree.

"I'll never look at a brick wall the same way again," said junior David Heafitz, who went on the trip. "I went back to the Navy Base [where the group lodged] feeling the walls of my dorm."

"It was incredible," said junior Brad Skow, who also went on the trip. "It was a piece of artwork. It went really fast, like clockwork. They made sure every brick was perfectly laid."

An appreciation for manual labor is just one of the things workcamp participants say they gained while in Lauderdale.

"[During the week] I was surrounded by people who are dedicated to helping people in need," Skow said. "I'm not accustomed to looking at the world that way and making [service] a priority."

Sophomore Katherine Higgins said, "I think that it's really easy to get wrapped up in ourselves here at school. Trips like this are a good opportunity to get back in touch with what's happening."

St. Pauls is one of the churches that was burned during the rash of arsons that left many southern black churches in ruins last summer. The overarching national group that organizes aid to congregations is the Church Rebuilding Project. After contacting Habitat for Humanity, a subsidiary organization, the Oberlin group was put in touch with Washington Quaker Workcamps, the group that directly managed their project. Another trip is planned for Winter Term and Heafitz urges those interested to volunteer.

The other Oberlin students to make the trek south were first-year Maria Garcia, sophomore Sarann Bielavitz, junior Joanna Morse, senior Steve Postellon, junior Chris Abraham and senior Amelia Glaser.

Though some construction work, like laying the church foundation and installing plumbing, is contracted, the rest is volunteer. The Oberlin group worked with Confer and about seven other volunteers, all of whom were involved in ministry work.

Heafitz said the idea to organize the Fall Break trip came to him during Rosh Hashanah while sitting in temple. "It hit me on my holiday, when I had a place to worship," Heafitz said.

Three weeks before Fall Break, Heafitz organized a meeting for those interested in helping rebuild. Though about 15 people showed up, space was limited. Only a few members of the group knew each other prior to the project.

Unskilled laborers before Fall Break, the Oberlin students returned to campus considered skilled laborers by those who supervised their work.

"We're all experts now," Higgins said.

Members of the Oberlin group said they received a warm welcome from the community and could tell that their work was appreciated.

During the workday, members of the congregation would stop by and observe the rebuilding progress. Morse recalled hearing one women who came by say, "This is my church," and said, "She was really proud of it. It said a lot that all these people coming together could take something harmful and build it back stronger."

Every day, women of the church would cook lunch for the volunteers. "We got to taste southern cooking," Skow said. "It was good to see how much [people] appreciated the volunteers."

Some group members also agreed that their stereotypes about Southern white-black relations, Jewish-Christian relations and north-south relations were destroyed during the week.

Higgins, who is originally from Charlotte, N.C., said, "It seems people think the south is a different place, that it's backwards … I definitely think those kinds of stereotypes were broken."

She also said, "I was impressed with the acceptance of people with very different backgrounds of everyone involved. It just didn't really matter when we were there to do what we were there to do."

The group didn't leave the Naval Base that much. After a day of hard work, they were "pretty tuckered out" Higgins said. Free time, she said, was spent talking, playing pool, swimming in a pond. Weather was gorgeous, Higgins said, with temperatures in the 80s.

But as the week progressed, workers got to know each other better - and began to work together better.

"It took a while - about a day or two - to figure things out," Higgins said. "You have to know what to do before you can really work together … As we got to know each other and how everything worked, we worked a lot more efficiently."

Heafitz said, "I've never grown closer to a group of Oberlin students in as short a period of time."

Perhaps the bricklayers' model inspired the Oberlin group to new heights. "If everyone could have the unity and teamwork those men possessed," Heafitz said, "it would be amazing, what we could accomplish."