Winter break is a time for students to finally relax and take time off from their studies. This year some students travelled, others visited friends and family, some worked jobs and internships, some just binged Netflix for 3 weeks straight. But for junior Grace Stockert, at least one week of her break was dedicated to helping people.

Stockert spent Dec. 15-22 in Oak Island and Anahuac, Texas, on a mission trip to help with the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey.

“There was a group of 16 of us, ten of us were students and the six others were adults in the Ashland community and so we went through Park Street Brethren Church,” Stockert said. “They went through Community Christian Fellowship Church in Oak Island, so then they just basically housed us and fed us the whole week we were down there.”

The church welcomed Stockert and the group with open arms, immediately involving them in their work towards helping people.

“We got to just kind of like hang out with them for the week and do projects they were already working on and already had started with their different teams of people,” she said. It was was similar to a Habitat for Humanity trip, but it wasn’t run by habitat.

The similarity to Habitat for Humanity and the low price of the trip were two of the biggest reasons Stockert decided she was going to go.

“They made it super cheap for us, it was like 50 bucks for the whole week, so I was like ‘heck that sounds cool and it’s only 50 dollars, let’s do it,’” Stockert said. “I had gone on a Habitat trip spring break freshman year to Birmingham, and that was a super fun time, so why not do it again, except over Christmas break?”

The 16 of them who decided to go on the trip were split into two different groups. The first group helped a mother and son whose house was damaged by the hurricane. They worked on turning two shipping containers into tiny homes for the family, leaving it on their plot of land.

“They were busy digging trenches, running lines, cutting up some drywall, putting it in, insulating it, making walls, and whatever. The built stairs up to the things so basically just like putting all the bones needed into the containers,” Stockert said.

The second group, the group Stockert was a part of, helped an elderly woman whose house was also damaged in the hurricane. The house had not been touched since the natural disaster, so the furniture needed removed. Stockert said they had to saw the woman’s couch in half because it was so waterlogged and incredibly heavy.

There was also mold growing “I think like probably a foot up” on her walls, so the walls and moldy wood had to be torn out, the electricity had to be rewired, and new insulation put in.
“We had to pull so many nails,” she said. “I stepped on two of them that wasn’t fun, but I don’t have tetanus so that’s good.”

Stockert said that her group was a little disappointed because they couldn’t finish the work, but also very proud of the work they got done over the course of the week.

“We wish we had finished it, but it was like a good week’s worth of work to even get to that point, so we’re pretty proud of ourselves,” she said. Taking into consideration there were only five people in the group and not a lot of experience between them, they got a lot of good work done.

During the free time between working, eating, and sleeping, Stockert said the group got to talk with the people in Texas and enjoy themselves.

“We had lots of fun,” she said. “We got to try fried alligator and I think it was one that some guy named George caught in his driveway or something, so it was just ‘super Texas’.” Oak Island, where the group stayed, is the alligator capital of Texas, so they got the full alligator hunter experience. One hunter had a 30-foot-long statued alligator in his living room.

While the group got to see alligators and the gulf, Stockert said some of her favorite memories were small moments. She said the good times were the little jokes throughout the day that kept the group energy going.

Stockert suggests others to go on a mission trip if it is something that interests them, and students can easily overcome money barriers. Mission trips are worth it because of goodwill, good memories, and new friends.

“I think that all of us were different but we worked together so well. It was just nice to not only build a community down there, but build one with yourself and be able to bring that home too.” she said.