ADAMS – So you’re 15 years old and a Southland Public Schools student.

Friday, October 22, 1999

ADAMS – So you’re 15 years old and a Southland Public Schools student.

It’s October and the annual Minnesota Education Association convention is under way and that means "no school" for two days.

You can sleep late, forget homework, hang out with friends and kick back and relax.

Not exactly.

Southland Public Schools students spent their Thursday holiday working. They helped other volunteers build a new home for Dixie Bergstrom and her family in Adams.

Between 18 and 20 youths, Southland middle and senior high students, reported for duty early Thursday morning at the Habitat for Humanity – Freeborn/Mower project in Adams.

They are all members of the Lutheran Youth Organization at Little Cedar and Marshal Lutheran Churches. The Rev. Allen Gunderson, senior pastor at Little Cedar Lutheran Church, coordinated their efforts.

"They are all part of the ‘Youth Serve’ program and working to earn $500, which has been pledged by the local AAL branch," said Gunderson. "The purpose of the program is to teach youths to serve their communities. The AAL branch will make a donation of $500 to the Habitat project in return for the youths’ work. The $500 will be used to buy something needed in the house."

Site supervisor Dale Beckel and Jim Schroeder, who is in charge of procuring materials and services for the project, supervised the students’ efforts.

"Today, they’re going to do the window wells on the house," said Beckel. "They cleaned up the inside, both the top and the lower level floors, and their task will be to put the window wells in place."

Other adult volunteers, including Roger Weness, Bernie Halver and Ken Wermager, gave directions to the youths, but it was as much a hands-on experience for the youths as anything. In other words, they did most of the work.-

According to Beckel, the Habitat project in Adams is one month ahead of schedule. This week, Lone Star Plumbing’s Bob Heimer has been completing the installation work inside the home and electricians from Schmitz Electric, Sunshine Electric and Cliff’s Electric all did the wiring.

"We’ve had four to five regular volunteers every day we’ve been able to work," said Beckel, a veteran contractor and contracting business-owner. "They are all retired and they keep coming back the same every day. They’ve done just a great job."

Ground was broken for the project, the first Habitat volunteer effort to build housing for the disadvantaged outside the cities of Albert Lea and Austin, in mid-August.

Immediately, Jim Bustad did the excavation and Boe Brothers and Osmundson Brothers helped.

As the frame went up and then the roof and walls, the project attracted its hard corps of volunteers. A neighbor along the cul de sac where the Habitat house is being built, Joe Lammers, has been a loyal worker.

So has Dwain Vangsness, who with his wife, Bev, donated the property for the house-building project. Gerald Meier donates his time and talents and so do Halver, Wermager and Schroeder, too.

They work from 8:30 in the morning until 3 p.m. in the afternoon, stopping for lunch brought to them by Shirley Schroeder, Jim’s wife, and other area women.

Other volunteers – they are indeed too numerous to mention -come and go, giving as much time as they can.

The 960 square foot, split-level home will have three bedrooms for single mother Dixie Bergstrom and her family. Bergstrom spends many of her days off from work at the project, helping the volunteers. Part of the Habitat agreement is for the new home-owner to put her own "sweat equity" into the project. Her sons help, too.

But Thursday’s contributions of the Little Cedar and Marshall churches’ youths will be remembered as an important part of the project.

April Voigt, a junior at Southland and daughter of Terry and Kathy Voigt, is president of the LYO. "We’ve done other projects, like help move things at Good Earth Village and the food-buying project for the Salvation Army Austin Corps emergency food shelves and for the Mower County Humane Society, but this is the first house building projects the kids have done."

"As you can see," Voigt said pointing to Jill Landherr and Will Bergstrom, laying timbers in place around a window. "We were willing to wake up early on our day off and help."

When the project was announced in mid-August, there were some skeptics who said "It couldn’t be done." With harvest that meant many had to work in the fields, but next week the insulation and siding will be installed, so the skeptics have been proven wrong.

Habitat For Humanity volunteers and the organization’s generous supporters are once again making the most important impact anyone possibly can: provide shelter for someone in need.

"It’s a success. I’ve never seen anything like it," said Beckel. "They want to get this house built and get it done and they’re doing it. It’s quite a success I tell you."