serviCe, PArTnershiP & fAiTh Putting Faith in Action the Alternative Spring Break experience trip, I can honestly say that I is transformative for many Bellarmine had never picked up a hammer. students. It certainly was for Erica We would work all day, getting Osborne. A 2004 graduate who is now up early, heading out to the assistant director of Bellarmine’s work site, taking a break for Academic Resource Center, she spent lunch, and then heading back three spring breaks in Appalachia around dinner time. It wasn’t working with the Christian Appalachian glamorous work, and one day Project and now encourages other it even snowed, but I can’t students to give the program a try. describe the feeling of putting My freshman year, I just went in a hard day’s work and on a whim. I won’t pretend to coming back to a church that say that I was moved to attend was hosting us to eat a home- by a deep resolve to want to cooked meal of soup beans volunteer or because I had and cornbread. We would go some deep religious conviction. to bed sore and exhausted, I had never done anything with and jazzed to get up and do the campus ministry office up the same thing that next day. until then. I couldn’t afford to I was horrified by the poverty go to Florida on spring break in Appalachia. It felt like I was Erica Osborne ’04 and I just wanted to go some- in a different country. But where – anywhere. The thought we were still in Kentucky. We of going back home and laying were still in our own state. almost all of us Bellarmine the finished product of what around doing nothing all week students. But by the end of we had started. They had an was too depressing. That year, the next year, Ms. Osborne considered the week, when he saw how entire wall in their home with only three Bellarmine students skipping Alternative Spring Break in favor hard we worked, his fears were nothing but pictures of all went on the trip. By my last of a trip to Florida. But an unexpected eased. His wife kept remarking, of the people who had built dents that we had to take one mind. She went back to Appalachia. give up a chance to be on the every time I tell that story.their home. I get teary-eyed“I can’t believe you girls would-Christmas card from Mary changed her trip, there were enough stu of those large passenger vans. My most memorable experi- beach. Why would you give Alternative Spring Break That first trip, I worked ence by far was building a new that up to help out someone taught me a lot about what on a home owned by an home for the Johnson family, you don’t even know?” We it meant to put your faith in elderly woman named Mary. a family of four that had fallen kept trying to explain to her action. As a Catholic, I go to It had fallen into some serious on hard times after the father that satisfaction that we got church on Sundays, I don’t disrepair and she couldn’t had been injured at work and out of helping others, and how eat meat during Lent, all afford to get it fixed up. I spent were living in a camper. When really, it was a lot of fun. But that. But before those trips, all week roofing – which I we arrived at the work site, the she just kept shaking her head it had never occurred to me know my father thinks is very father was horrified to see a and saying, “I just don’t get it.” the power of being in service comical because before the work crew of 10 young women, to others. It never occurred A year later, while Ms. Osborne was to me that I was supposed Erica Osborne, fourth from left, in 2004. working at a third site, one of the CAP to live my faith. Melanie (Dr. leaders took her and fellow Bellarmine Melanie-Préjean Sullivan, student Mary Beth Williams back to the director of campus ministry) Johnsons’ house to surprise them. told me something on one of We knocked on the door. The those trips that I never forgot: youngest daughter answered. that God purposefully made Before I could even get any being in service to others feel words out of my mouth, she good. You get satisfaction from started to jump up and down helping those in need, because and squealed, “Mama! Daddy! that’s the way He designed it. Come quick! It’s Mary Beth Now, I almost overly push and Erica!” Mary Beth and I students to do Alternative immediately burst into tears. Spring Break. I tell them to Though hundreds of volunteers just try it – to just go once and had worked on their house, see what all the fuss is about. I and though so much time had know that like me, once they’ve passed, they remembered us. been they will just keep going They couldn’t wait to show us back. They’ll be hooked. spring 2013 spring 2013 33
Bellarmine Magazine_Spring2013
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