Stanley Zavatski, from Pennsylvania, high fives Group Workcamps staff members after a morning meeting in the gym of South Rowan High School on Tuesday morning. Group Workcamps foundation based in Colorado brings together Christian youth groups from all over the United States all summer long to different locations for one week work camps. The participants spend the week working on projects for people in need and having after work activites, fellowship and devotion time. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Follow on Facebook

Matt Lindsay (letf), from Living Word Ministries in King NC, high fives Camp Director Jobe Lewis as buses and vans leave South Rowan High School on Tuesday morning. Group Workcamps based in Colorado has set up a week long camp at the high school to operate an outreach ministries that speads out into the community to work on small projects for people in need of minor home repair. The workers consist of Christian youth groups from many differents states. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Crew #6 put on new roof shingles on Gladine Nance's house on Brown Road. (Standing, left to right) Connor Sampson, Nicole Ferretti and (kneeling) Alyssa Vollkommer work together . photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Crew #6 put on new roof shingles on Gladine Nance's house on Brown Road. (left to right) Phil Olson, Connor Sampson, Alyssa Vollkommer and Stanley Zavatski work together with Kristen Akridge and Nicole Ferretti (not pictured). photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

With ladders, saws and paints, campers in the Group Workcamp staying at South Rowan High School this week head off to continue their projects. photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Young people pack into vans behind South Rowan High School on Tuesday morning before heading out to a work site. Group Workcamps foundation based in Colorado brings together Christian youth groups from all over the United States all summer long to different locations for one week work camps. The participants spend the week working on projects for people in need and having after work activites, fellowship and devotion time. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

CHINA GROVE — Gladine Nance guesses the roof on her small house is at least 30 years old, and she points to some spots in the living room where it leaks during heavy rains.

Overhead, she hears the muffled footsteps of a crew of five teenagers and their adult leader who are literally giving her a gift from above — they’re putting on a new roof.

Nance treasures their daily visits. She sets out a big pitcher of ice water and cups on her side porch.

She made them come into her house the day before so they could eat the lunch they brought with them out of the heat. She talked to them around her big kitchen table, learning they came from five different states.

One of the first things she did was introduce her family, by showing them all the pictures on a wall.

“I wish I could keep them,” Gladine says of the work crew. “I had the best day yesterday with them.”

She heard a couple of the boys, Stanley Zavatski of Pennsylvania and Connor Sampson of Illinois, describe their love of chicken, so her kitchen this second morning has an unmistakable smell.

“They’re having fried chicken today,” she says. “They don’t know it.”

Crew No. 6 includes Sampson and Zavatski, Kristen Akridge of Maryland, Nicole Ferretti of Florida, Alyssa Vollkommer of Illinois and their adult leader, Phil Olson Of Indiana.

They represent one of 48 crews making repairs and improvements to individual homes in Rowan County and Kannapolis as part of the Christian-based Group Work Camp program, operating this week out of South Rowan High School.Two crews also have been painting at Nazareth Children’s Home.

The Group Work Camp has 287 teenagers from a dozen states.

Camp Director Jobe Lewis says the long-established program, headquartered in Colorado, aims at getting kids involved in community service and, through that experience, growing in their faith.

At the South Rowan camp, up to eight different Christian denominations are represented.

The planning behind bringing a Group Work Camp here took about two years, according to Kim Hodges, youth leader for Mount Zion United Church of Christ in China Grove, the host church.

She personally has accompanied her church’s senior high youth groups to 13 previous work camp gatherings, some as far away as Ohio. Last year, she and her kids went to Oak Hill, W.Va.

The commitment is $400 per child. At Mount Zion UCC, for example, the kids are responsible for their $50 deposit, but the church raises money for the rest of their costs.

Mount Zion UCC and First United Church of Christ in Salisbury are the only Rowan churches involved in this year’s camp at South Rowan High.

“I wouldn’t mind hosting this thing every summer,” South Rowan High Assistant Principal Barry West said. “The kids are just fantastic, not to mention what a service it is to the community.”

The typical camp day starts at 6:45 a.m. with breakfast served by the school cafeteria staff.

An 8 a.m. program in the gymnasium includes music, a theme for the day and an inspirational video. The student participants fill the bleachers on one side of the gym.

By 8:30 a.m., they depart for their work sites, giving high-fives to staff members as they leave the gym and head for the back parking lot filled with an army of church vans.

Unless groups ask to stay together, the crews are assembled so members don’t know each other on the first day. By the end of the week, a lot of new friendships have been forged.

Before leaving the parking lot, a designated crew member picks up food and drinks for the day, while others might visit the “tool room,” to sign out extra items they need at the site. Hodges says the community loaned the work camp close to 100 ladders, for example.

Each crew member is in charge of something, including devotions, progress reports, the work plan, organization, breaks and tools.

Most of the pre-qualified homes this week are in the China Grove and Salisbury areas. The projects generally involve painting, minor home repair, the building of decks and wheelchair ramps and roofing, if the pitch is not too steep.

Crews have a minimum of one adult and five youth members.

Site coaches, such as Dan Mikkelson of First UCC in Salisbury and Billy Bullard of Mount Zion UCC, are serving as technical advisers at six to seven homes each. They also make sure crews have the right supplies.

Crews eat lunch and participate in devotions on site. They return to the school about 3:30 p.m. each day and take showers before a 5 p.m. dinner. They have some free time until a 7:30 evening program full of music, videos and a message. Youth group devotions are held at 9 p.m., and lights have to be out by 11 p.m.

The boys and girls sleep in different wings of the school.

A three-on-three basketball tournament is under way, and auditions were held Tuesday night for a talent-variety show Wednesday night.

Group Work Camp allows participants to have half of Wednesday — seven hours — as free time to explore the region. Some of the teens spoke of Concord Mills, the NASCAR Hall of Fame and Lowe’s Motor Speedway as options they were considering.

Two work camp kids were taken to the hospital on Monday, the first work day. One suffered from dehydration; the other, from a tennis ball in the eye. At Gladine Nance’s house, all six crew members work on the roof, nailing in the new layers of shingles in temperatures above 90 degrees.

A Group Work Camp veteran, Connor Sampson says the weeklong experience allows him to focus on what’s important, step up to help other people and find pride in what his crew accomplishes.

“And I always meet awesome people,” he says.

Gladine Nance is saying the same thing.