When it comes to charitable donations, the money changing hands often moves in mysterious ways.
That’s the lesson Westminster resident Roger Gudenkauf and his team of more than 400 volunteers learned last Monday, the first night of the annual Catholic Heart Work Camp stop in Denver, based out of Ranum Middle School.
About 290 high school students and 120 adults from across the Midwest gathered at Ranum for a week of fun and hard work, where teams were put together to fix people’s homes – about 130 of them in all – across Denver everyday for four days, for free.
It was after the first day, when team number 53 or “Team Demolition” as the teenagers called themselves, had gone to fix the deck at Maxine Burks’ Casa Estates mobile home in Westminster and realized it was too broken to fix. It needed to be replaced but there was just one problem: the cost of $1,000 was too steep for Burks, 76, living alone on a fixed income.
So Gudenkauf asked for a prayer, and lo and behold, it was answered within an hour.
“She couldn’t pay for it, so the youth group comes in and they were ready to stand in the streets and try to raise $1,000 in one night,” Gudenkauf said before a crowd of about 500 people, including many residents whose homes were fixed, during the camp’s final gathering Thursday night at Ranum. “I had agreed that we would pay for it, but they had to pray that night. Within an hour, $1,000 was deposited in our checking account.” Gasps and applause from the audience followed, and Gudenkauf still doesn’t know where the money came from.
“It was very, very spiritual,” he said by phone the following Monday. “It was very, very powerful, and that’s the way it went on all week.” For Burks, the new deck will allow her to actually sit outside without being afraid for her safety.
“I wouldn’t be sitting here,” said Burks, beaming with a smile from her new deck after it was completed June 16. “The old one, you could fall through. I fell through once and messed up my knee. You wouldn’t have gotten on it again. It was old, old.
“This is wonderful.” Team Demolition members said they didn’t know what to expect when they arrived at camp, but they felt proud of themselves for accomplishing more than they had bargained for.
“When we got here, we didn’t know what to expect,” said Jessica Estrada, 17, from Lockhart, Texas. “The first day here, I realized it’s more work than we thought. But I’m just glad we are able to help this lady.”
“We got straight to work,” said Jennifer Kroon, 17, from Houston. “We demolished this thing before lunch. We’ve got the work done quickly and we have done a good job.”
“It’s a really great experience,” added Brian McCue, 16, also from Houston. “And you get to use power tools.”
Burks couldn’t thank the volunteers enough for fixing her deck, and living alone, she said she also enjoyed their company.
“It’s been a lot smoother and faster than I thought,” she said. “I never would have been able to afford to have this done. And not only are they hard workers, but they are charming, very social, very polite and a joy to be around. I can’t think of enough nice things to say about them.
“I’d be proud to have any one of them as my child.”
The Catholic Heart Work Camp started in 1993 in Winter Park, Fla., and has since expanded to include 44 cities across the country and one in Jamaica. The twofold mission of the camp, as described on its website, is “to revitalize communities and beautify homes for the elderly, disabled and those who cannot afford needed repairs” and “to empower participants to live as disciples of Christ through serving others.”
Gudenkauf said his third year hosting the camp has definitely been empowering, and he plans to run it again next summer.
“It was a pretty phenomenal week, what we did with that many people in four days,” said Gudenkauf, who has volunteered for most of his life, and who formed the Neighborhood Action Group in 1992 after a shooting at Ranum. “It was just an unbelievable team approach in everything, everybody being involved with it and getting stuff out to people and the sites. It was just unbelievable, probably the most phenomenal week of your life that you could ever have.”