Although their accents and hometowns were very different, Brooklyn teens and their fellow volunteers from Texas, Indiana, and Wisconsin at Catholic Heart Workcamp had in common the desire to do good works for people who are in need.

That’s how Ian Janczys of St. Boniface’s Oratory Youth Leadership (OYL), Downtown Brooklyn, sums up the week in Kentucky.

Father Anthony Andreassi, a history teacher at Regis H.S. who resides at St. Boniface Oratory, led 14 teens and four other adults from the Brooklyn Diocese to Louisville, KY, for the June 29-July 5 work camp.

Many had been part of an OYL service project to an orphanage in Nicaragua last summer.

After an 800-mile flight, the Brooklyn group arrived on Sunday for orientation. Highland Hills Middle School in Georgetown, Ind., just across the Ohio River from Louisville, was their home base for the week.

Catholic Heart Workcamp was founded in 1993 by Steve and Lisa Walker, a husband and wife who were youth ministers at St. Margaret Mary parish, Winter Park, Florida. (www.heartworkcamp.com)

Father Andreassi explained that when the 300 teens arrived at orientation they were divided into work crews for the week.

GOOD HEARTS: Fourteen teens led by Father Anthony Andreassi, along with four adults, from St. Boniface Oratory Youth Leadership took part in Catholic Heart Workcamp in Kentucky June 29 - July 5.

The days began with breakfast at 7 a.m. before gathering all supplies and lunches for the day into vehicles for rides to the job sites.

Kathryn Bozzuffi, 16, of St. Boniface, was part of the service project to Nicaragua. This year she found herself scraping old paint off widow Anna Baker’s house in steamy suburban Louisville and then painting the house a fresh white. Baker was “thrilled” to have them. She cooked for them and cried when it was time for them to leave, Bozzuffi said.

“I had fun in Kentucky,” says Bozzuffi. She made new friends especially from a large contingent of teens from Texas.

Breaking for lunch, they shared prayer as well as sandwiches. Around 2:45 p.m., they cleaned up and returned to the school for a shower and free time. Mass was available at 4:30 p.m. After dinner there was an evening program of skits, singing, team reports and a slideshow of the workday. Rosary was available at 10 p.m. before lights out at 11 p.m.

Kevin Gatta of Queen of All Saints, Fort Greene, was one of the adult leaders along on the service project. Gatta, of Gatta Design & Co., accompanied his son Dominic, 16. Gatta had wanted to go to Nicaragua last year with older son, Luke, but wasn’t able to make it, so when he heard about this year’s project, “I said to Dominic, ‘Let’s go.’”

Kevin also worked on Anna Baker’s house. As they scraped paint, he said, they found other things that needed to be fixed. They used a Home Depot gift card to purchase hydrangea bushes to spruce up Baker’s yard. The neighbors came out to watch and asked where the volunteers were from.

Some were real “characters” Gatta said, but kind and willing to lend tools.

“A little kindness goes a long way,” says Kevin.
Meanwhile Dominic Gatta had been assigned to Options for Individuals, a day center for people with mental and developmental disabilities. At first, it made him nervous to work with people with disabilities, he admits. But he got over that. One day he organized a game of wheelchair dodge ball for about 20 people. “It was pretty intense,” he says.

He became “good friends” with a middle-aged fellow named Vincent, who was great at doing 100-piece jigsaw puzzles. Vincent made Dominic promise to come back the next day.

Working with people with disabilities made Dominic realize “how much I have been blessed.” Even with their disabilities, “they never complained.”

Dominic admits he was “forced” into going to the Catholic Heart Workcamp because his mother thought he needed to have some community service experience, but he is very glad he went. His team included teens from Texas, Illinois, Pittsburg, Atlanta and Indiana. They were amused by his Brooklyn accent, stories about New York and that he had no lawn around his house.

Theo McKenzie, 15, who attends St. Ann’s School, Downtown Brooklyn, says that Catholic Heart Workcamp reminded him “how lucky you are to have what you have. It made me very thankful.”

He painted screen doors at a housing project in New Albany, Ind., with teens from Wisconsin, Texas, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Some in the neighborhood tried to help them while others yelled at the strangers.
For McKenzie, the evening youth rallies were the first time he had heard a “Christian rock band.”

In the school gym each night, it wasn’t unusual for 100 people to line up for confession. “I’d never seen so many kids so enthused with religion,” he said.

Ian Janczys, 17, of St. Boniface’s group, took part in the Nicaragua trip last year and wanted to see the effects of poverty in the U.S. His team was assigned to do yard work and wash windows at a residence for abused women.

It felt good to help people, Janczys says, and “make the connection with God.”

“Poverty is a big issue in the U.S.,” Janczys said. “People need to help the old and the uneducated. People should step up more and help.”

Matt Windels is entering senior year at Regis. One day he saw forms for Workcamp on Father Andreassi’s desk. “Here, you’d be great at this,” the teacher said, passing him an application.

“Before I knew it, it was May and we were having a meeting and June and we were at LaGuardia traveling to Louisville.”

Windels worked at a Salvation Army center accepting donations, sorting clothes and putting them out on the floor for sale.

His team included teens from Illinois and Baton Rouge. They stay in touch by e-mail. “It was very interesting,” Windels says of the week. “I found we are really not that different except for accents. It was very enjoyable, a labor of love.”

Of the evening programs, he says, “Some of the preaching was intense,” but the homilies by chaplain Father Geoff Rose, OSFS, “challenged us directly, and addressed us as teenagers. They were refreshing, inspiring.

“It was a very worthwhile experience. I would tell anyone who would be skeptical about going to put their fears away and go with it.”

“Let others see God inside you and outside,” was Workcamp’s theme, said Chris Mulrooney.

Mulrooney, of St. Patrick’s parish, Bay Ridge, is entering junior year at Regis. He had read about the trip to Nicaragua in The Tablet and told Father Andreassi that he wanted a similar experience.

Mulrooney wasn’t disappointed. His team scraped and painted houses, whose residents were “very grateful,” he says, for “doing good work, God’s work.”

At an evening get-together some residents came to thank the teens. Mulrooney said one made the point that people should be hearing more about the good that young people are doing rather than the bad things that so often get reported.

“I learned about myself as a person,” Mulrooney said. “I learned about God’s will and to have the confidence in God’s will. He is watching over you.”

He keeps thinking about a simple lesson from the week – “stop, look and listen – stop what you are doing and find God, look for God in others and listen for God’s calling in everything you do.”