Auction being held between morning services Mission trip youth get experience building shed for fundraiser June 17

If you were 14, and about to spend nearly 30 hours over five days by helping strangers with their small home repairs, would you want to know how to hang siding and hammer a nail?

Some that age may not have those skills, which is why Mark Pliscott, of Shafer, decided to plan a project close to home when his oldest daughter Celine, who is entering 10th grade at Chisago Lakes High School, registered to join a youth mission trip through Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church. Seventeen high-school-age youth representing Zion, joined by five adults, will leave Minnesota in July for nine days in Oak Hill, W. Va., a rural community 35 miles south of Charleston. The area has many households that do not have either the physical or financial means to complete home repairs. There will be work at enough sites to occupy more than 200 youth and adult volunteers for several morning and afternoon hours during their week in Oak Hill. The projects are coordinated by Christian-based Group Workcamps, which has sites in 42 communities from Utah to New Hampshire, where staff will welcome volunteers over multiple weeks this summer.

Participants must pack certain tools for their trip in addition to personal items they would typically need for a week away from home, (though electronics, i.e., smartphones, are not permitted.) The Group Workcamps staff splits up each church team once they reach the destination, so that each volunteer gets to meet and work with other people (often in groups of six) whom they have not known previously. The church teams reconnect daily for meals and for morning and evening programs that include lots of music. They will be based at an Oak Hill area school, where they will sleep in classrooms. Shed for sale Some teams, including Zion youth, may be assigned to fix structures and it is a new pine shed that Pliscott has guided the local volunteers in building as preparation and education for their mission trip.

They raised the walls around the base of the shed Saturday, June 9. When completed, Zion congregation’s Pastor Mike Peterson will open an auction on the shed – open to the public – Sunday, June 17, between Zion’s traditional and contemporary worship services. All proceeds from the auction will support the volunteer team’s mission to West Virginia. Todd Freeman, youth ministry leader at Zion church and one of the five adults headed for West Virginia, said the trip will require funds of $600 to $650 per person, youth or adult, for a total of about $14,000 for this group. Other fundraisers toward this trip have included a silent auction and Christmas cookie sales (with the youth volunteers involved in baking and decorating).

They have had to pay very little money toward materials for the shed, which is eight feet wide, 11 feet deep. Pliscott works as an assembler for Electric Machinery, owned by WEG Group, in Minneapolis. EM builds large motors and generators, whose parts are received in pine crates. The company donated empty pine crates to provide most of the lumber needed for the Zion group’s shed, materials which EM would otherwise pay to recycle. Freeman said that shingles for the shed’s roof have come from Grant and Kerri Marshall, musicians from Zion’s contemporary worship band, who had shingles remaining from a home roofing project. Pliscott said that the group bought other lumber, vinyl siding, nails and materials all at a greatly reduced rate from McCarron’s Building Center, of Forest Lake.

Pliscott drew plans for the shed on a legal pad. He gained his own experience through work on his home property and other projects, including helping to re-roof his parents’ home. “It’s all learned,” he said. “It’s nice that the kids can get this experience. A lot of them (going to West Virginia) are new and have never been on another trip,” he added. Freeman said Group Workcamps expect to welcome volunteers who have no experience. “You can go on a trip and never have held a hammer before,” he said. Each small group at an Oak Hill work site will include mostly youth, often with two adults. Freeman said the groups will employ problem-solving skills when completing certain jobs. “We stand back and let them figure out what to do,” he said. “They lead themselves when they’re at their work sites. (Our youth) are getting a little experience with that by working on this shed.

We want them to experience helping other people,” Freeman added. “When they do that, they’re serving God. It’s a life-changing thing for the people receiving the help and also for the people giving the help. It’s fun to see that happen in these kids. They’re usually really anxious to do it again.” The Father’s Day auction opens at 9:44 a.m.To see the shed and participate in the auction, Zion church is at 28005 Old Towne Road, Chisago City.