By Paul Thompson
Northeast News
June 29, 2016

KANSAS CITY, Missouri – Dozens of volunteers from church congregations throughout Nebraska descended upon the Historic Northeast last week to lend a helping hand to the community.

The Nebraska Synod, a group of Lutheran churches throughout the state, organizes annual mission trips to locations with needs throughout the United States. Prior mission trips have sent volunteers to New Orleans, Chicago, and Detroit. This year, the group of 225 volunteers chose Kansas City, with roughly 85 volunteers serving in the Historic Northeast for a full week of hard work.

The volunteers were embedded at Children’s Memorial Lutheran Church, where pastor Ann Rundquist was in need of plenty of helping hands. Throughout the week, the group of youth volunteers transformed the church’s food pantry with new tile, cleaned up alleyways along Independence Avenue, worked in Northeast gardens ahead of the weekend’s Cultivate KC Urban Grown Farms and Gardens tour, and even helped clean out a vacant house that had been nearly destroyed by squatters.

“We didn’t have the ability among ourselves to get it cleaned up. We chose to get the house cleaned up, and hopefully get someone living in there so that it’s not burglarized anymore,” Rundquist told theNortheast News. “We want to be a part of improving the neighborhoods in the Northeast. By taking care of this house, that’s a small way that we can help.”

Youth volunteer Kortney Buresh spent the better portion of two days cleaning out the vacant home, which had been filled nearly top-to-bottom with trash and debris.

“Yesterday, we spent about seven hours, and today we spent about three hours,” said Buresh. “It’s been really hard, but it’s been a really good experience.”

Despite working in the basement of Children’s Memorial Lutheran Church, re-tiling the floor on a blistering June afternoon, volunteer AJ Novotne showed uncommon enthusiasm for the job.

“I really like helping people, and that’s really what I’m here for,” said Novotne on Tuesday, June 21. “I’m hoping that today we get a lot of this tile placed. I think they’re going to set up a clothes drive and a food pantry in here, so it’s important that we get this done, so that maybe we can help out with other tasks.”

Rebecca Koop of Saint John Gardens also benefitted from the flood of volunteers, as she commandeered a group of more than a dozen of volunteers on Thursday, June 23. The small army helped move and spread a pile of mulch throughout the garden, saving Koop and the garden stakeholders time and effort.

“It would take days,” said Koop of completing the project without help. “With a crew this young, and with 20 of them, they’re halfway done and it’s been an hour.”

Youth volunteer Bree Wilkinson, who was part of the crew tearing up laminate and re-tiling the floor of the food pantry over at Children’s Memorial Lutheran Church, acknowledged the hard work put in by herself and other Nebraska Synod volunteers.

“It’s been really great, and really humbling,” said Wilkinson. “The first part – taking the tile up – was physically exhausting. Towards the end of the day, we were running out of gas.”

That being said, Wilkinson was still more than happy to complete the project. After all, it was exactly what she signed up for.

“It feels amazing,” said Wilkinson. “I told Ann, ‘You’re going to want to party in your food pantry, it’s going to look so great.’ Maybe I’m over-selling it a little bit, but it’s going to look great.”