Elizabeth Bergin will spend part of her summer vacation on the Navajo Reservation in Utah this year.
But Bergin, a senior at Omaha Northwest High School, isn't going to sightsee. The teen with be part of a youth group from Luther Memorial Lutheran Church, making the trip to repair homes on the reservation.
Bergin followed in the footsteps of her older sister, Lauren, who went on four trips of her own.
“I used to always look at her pictures from the trips and think, ‘I can't wait until I can go,'” Bergin remembered. Her younger brother, Connor, will make his second trip this year.
That type of enthusiasm is a hallmark of the young people who go on the service trips, according to Walt Duda, an adult site leader with the group. Duda has been providing adult supervision on the trips since Luther Memorial began its program in 1995. This will be his second trip to the reservation near Navajo Mountain, which has been called the most remote town in the United States.
The annual program is part of what used to be called Group Work Camps, established in the late 1970s and headquartered in Loveland, Colo. Luther Memorial has been taking part since 1995, Duda said.
“The whole idea came out of the flooding of the Big Thompson Canyon back in the 1970s” in Colorado, he said. “There was a flood, and it destroyed a lot of homes and did a lot of damage. There was a church in Loveland, and one of the youth leaders decided to take the youths down and see what they could do to help the victims.”
That effort grew into as many as 50 annual events, involving church youth groups across the country, some in urban areas and some on Native American reservations.
“There's such a need there, there's such poor housing on reservations,” Duda said. “We go there, do the work, and it exposes our kids to a culture they're not familiar with and a lifestyle they don't even know exists until they experience it.”
It also allows the youths to grow in their faith and learn the value of service, he added.
Bergin agreed.
“It gives you an appreciation for what you have and how fortunate you are,” she said. “It's something that I think about a lot, the people that I've met. And I look forward to going again.”
Many of the youths, like Elizabeth, will participate four times between ninth and 12th grade, Duda explained. This year's group includes 12 teens and seven adults.
The youths provide primarily carpentry work — Elizabeth has painted and done roofing work on her trips to reservations in South Dakota, Montana and Utah.
“The roofing was a new experience,” she said. “We had to spread tar and stuff.”
The group stays away from electrical and plumbing work, Duda said, but almost anything else is fair game — re-roofing, handicapped-accessible ramps, rebuilding porches, installing doors, painting, sheet-rock work.
Youth attend an orientation for basic carpentry skills and safety lessons, such as how to climb a ladder safely.
“A lot of it is on the job,” Duda said.
When the 12 youths from Luther Memorial arrive at the reservation this year, they will join about 350 other teens from across the country. The teens will stay in a local high school while on the trip, and will be divided, so each youth is working with four other teenagers and one adult from different youth groups.
“So you're with five total strangers,” Duda said. “But each person in the group has a specific job.”
Bergin still keeps in contact with some of the friends she's made on her trips.
“Everybody is ready to help the people of the community, they're all happy to be there,” she said.
Because the trip is faith-based, one member of the group leads a devotion each day, often inviting the residents of the house being worked on to join in.
“We work for five days, and they do absolutely amazing things,” Duda said. “”I've seen some of the most beautiful porches I've ever seen done by five kids who never even held a tool before.”
Besides giving service, the teens come away with a real appreciation of the things they take for granted, Duda said.
“When we go to Navajo Mountain, the vast majority of the houses have no electricity, the vast majority of the houses will have no running water,” he said. “The things we take for granted and think everybody has them — they realize that's just not the case.”
Each member of Luther Memorial's group also takes a quilt, created by a quilting circle at the church, to give to the owner of the home they work on.
“A quilt, to a Native American, is one of the most heartfelt gifts you can give them,” Duda said. “We try to get pictures of the kids presenting the quilt, so we can show the women (who make the quilts) when we get back.”
The quilt gift has become so popular a tradition that youth groups from other churches now do it as well, Duda said, and it expresses the respect that the youth come to feel for their friends on the reservations.
“They learn to respect these people,” Duda said. “They learn to respect people that have a totally different lifestyle than they have.
“And they grow in their faith.”
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