Helping in Iowa
Pella’s youth group performs service work in Cedar Rapids

By Bill Vander Weele

Sidney Herald
Published on Friday, July 3, 2009 11:23 AM MDT

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Steffan Anderson, a member of the Pella Lutheran Church youth group, will always remember a sprayed paint message he saw during the group’s mission trip to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

The statement simply said, “We survived.”

Cedar Rapids residents are now trying to recover from the Flood of 2008 that displaced businesses, public buildings and homes. The Pella youth group, under the leadership of Pastor Josh Magyar, made the decision to go help the cause with a service mission.

“We wanted to go help,” group member Kristen Anderson said.

Members of the group taking part in the service project were the two Andersons, Whitney Satra, Briana Wilcoxon, Katelyn Dynneson, Alexis Dynneson, Dustin Renders, Cody Daleske and Zack Hoffman. Adults were Magyar along with Jeremy and Pam Wilcoxon.

The group worked under the Presbyterian Disaster Relief Assistance program. The three stages of the rebuilding project are cleaning, tearing down buildings and then building new. The youth’s service was to help tear down destroyed homes.

The group watched a video, “Under Deep Water” on YouTube, that helped them understand the challenges and their task.

“It gave us focus,” Satra said.

S. Anderson said one of his highlights came when he talked to the owner of the home. “He couldn’t of been happier that we were there helping out.”

Although the youth group made fun trips to the Mall of America, Valley Fair and a Twins’ baseball game, the service the students performed was the highlight.

“I wouldn’t had mind staying the whole week there,” Satra said.

K. Anderson added, “It was nice to come there to help others.”

S. Anderson said, “I almost had as much fun doing the thing that wasn’t supposed to be fun.”

But they then admit that by the third day they were pretty exhausted from the service work.

“We lost steam fast,” S. Anderson said.

While in Iowa, the group stayed at a church with two other groups – volunteers of retired carpenters and construction workers along with a church youth group from West Virginia.

Sidney’s students connected well with the West Virginia group. In fact there’s talk of Pella’s youth conducting a future service project in West Virginia.

“I definitely think if an opportunity like this came along, we will do it,” S. Anderson said. “We had such a good time with it.”

editor@sidneyherald.com

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