Campus Ministry Students Travel to West Virginia for Retreat That Works Winter Alternative Break Experience
Caldwell College Campus Ministry students took part in a Winter Alternative Break Experience on Nazareth Farm in Salem, West Virginia from January 6 to January 12, 2008.
Students Albert Pryka, Mike Melvin, Ashesh Khadka, Bernadeth Piamonte, Kimberly Hayes, Lia Canavan, and Joe Bigg and Deacon Gregory Quinn spent a week with students from other colleges doing repairs on homes in Doddridge County, West Virginia for people who couldn't afford the labor or couldn't make the repairs themselves.
Michael Melvin, a junior at Caldwell College, said he experienced "a real sense of accomplishment" in being able to help complete strangers learn home repair skills. Melvin said he learned skills he had never done before like installing dry ceiling for a room, installing fixtures for a ceiling and chopping wood. And he said that the experience helped him gain insight into issues that affect people in different parts of the world.
Sophomore Lia Canavan said the retreat at Nazareth Farm was an intensely faith-filled invigorating community service experience. "The combination of the physical hands on work, living in community with others, prayer, sharing, and unity with each other and the environment we stayed in for a week made for an amazing experience."
Canavan said the students lived in community on the farm and "were really committed to living a simple life for the week-communal accommodations, bucket showers, minimalism when using water, farm chores every morning, group prayer at morning and night." She said the experience was a gift. "I felt like I received more from the experience of serving than I was actually giving. You end the week with so much more than what you began it with!"
Lia said forming a community with other volunteers from different colleges was very rewarding. "Being around others with such faith really does a lot for my faith, personally. As a group from Caldwell, we got a chance to really get to know one another, and this was an abundant blessing. I feel very connected with the other awesome Caldwell students who attended, and I am so thankful for that."
For more information about Nazareth Farm, go to www.nazarethfarm.org.
The Retreat That Works experience was the second of three alternative break experiences being offered through Campus Ministry in the 2007-2008 academic year. Alternative Spring Break will take place in Flat Gap, Kentucky. For more information, contact Deacon Gregory at or (973) 618-3302.