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ORU Students Learn By Helping
About 140 of them will spend their fall break cleaning up and rebuilding Tulsa's hurricane-ravaged sister city of Long Beach, Miss.
By April Marciszewski - Tulsa World Staff Writer 10/15/2005
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She has found that when she neglects her own to-do list and helps others instead, her agenda disappears.
"What you make happen for others, God will make happen for you," she said.
Helping victims of Hurricane Katrina has lifted Oral Roberts University students out of their sometimes-insulated worlds and dropped them into the larger community.
Emily Carter, a master of divinity student, leans toward the practical: finding a technician if a friend's computer crashes and listening when someone's had a tough day.
Katie Ryan, a junior studying Spanish and international business, said it's all about meeting people's practical needs -- giving them food and clothes and cleaning their houses.
She hopes that hurricane-related volunteerism will make students want to help others even more.
About 140 students, plus ORU employees, Mayor Bill LaFortune and three Guts Church employees, are scheduled to board four buses at 6 a.m. Saturday to drive to Tulsa's sister city of Long Beach, Miss.
The students plan to spend their fall break cleaning houses, clearing debris, distributing food and helping at a medical clinic.
Guts Church is leading Tulsa's semimonthly "Team Relief" trips to clean up and rebuild Long Beach, about 70 miles northeast of New Orleans.
Donations from Tulsa bankers, churches and the Tulsa Auto Dealers Association are paying for the ORU students' trip, said Nina Martino, Guts Church's missions director.
This could be the first of many ORU fall break mission trips, said Scott Davis, the graduate assistant in charge of community service.
Rhonda Gibson, a sophomore studying drama, television and film performance, signed up for the trip "to show how grateful I am to God."
Her parents weathered three days of the disaster in their New Orleans house. Then they moved to Tulsa, and her dad got the same managerial job at a Lowe's store here that he had back home.
Gibson doesn't have spare money to donate, but she has found in the trip to Long Beach a way to help others.
ORU students started brainstorming about how they could help as soon as Katrina rammed into the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.
About 600 people showed up at a campus meeting to learn about volunteer opportunities. They've since worked with the Red Cross, donated blood, raised money and written cards to hurricane victims.
Bethany Hejtmanek, a sophomore studying broadcast journalism, drafted 25 friends and spent her birthday weekend helping at an evacuee shelter in her hometown, Shreveport, La.
ORU plans later this month to raise money internally for students from the Gulf area who can't afford to return to ORU, a private school, next semester.
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April Marciszewski 581-8475
april.marciszewski@tulsaworld.com
