PUTNAM COUNTY—Parishioners in two parishes of Putnam County have been busy with mission trips this summer — one to help rebuild New Orleans and another to check the progress on building projects previously started in Tanzania.

Beau Meyer, a graduate of Ottawa SS. Peter & Paul Elementary and Ottawa-Glandorf High School, helped organize a group of three adults and seven young people from SS. Peter & Paul Parish to rebuild part of Musician’s Village in New Orleans.

“It gave my spiritual life a recharge,” the Miami University student says. “When I got there I was emotionally blown away.

“Mission trips build community,” he continues. “You get to know the people you work with every day. You learn a lot about yourself and you learn a lot about others.”

He says some of the young people are considering spending all of next summer back in New Orleans.

“There is just so much work to be done,” he adds. He says their work site was an eight-acre plot of land where homes are being built for professional musicians. Mr. Meyer says the project is the brainchild of Harry Connick Jr. and Bradford Marsalis who have partnered with Habitat for Humanity.

The New Orleans missionaries had to spend about $250 for the trip in late July.

“I had anticipated working on the same house the whole week, but we were assigned various different houses,” Mr. Meyer says, “everything from deconstruction of an old animal shelter to building a wall in a new home to putting the finishing touches on another home.”

Mr. Meyer served on a youth leadership project in high school, which got him interested in organizing a mission trip.

“It sparked in my head. When I moved down to Miami (University), one of the first meetings I went to was for campus crusades,” he says.

“I got to thinking, these kids are my age and they’re making a difference and I haven’t done anything like that yet,” he says. “I thought it would be really cool to get a group from my hometown to do something.”

After looking at various projects with Habitat for Humanity in other parts of the U.S., Mr. Meyer decided on New Orleans.

Four parishioners from Kalida St. Michael parish traveled to Tanzania to visit orphans in Mgolole. Missionaries of the Precious Blood Father Kenneth Alt and Brother Jerome Schulte, Jan Kahle and Connie Cleemput spent almost two weeks in June playing with the children at several orphanages and making plans to help set up a school for the orphans.

In recent years, the parish has provided funds to repair and upgrade the water system at the orphanage in Morogoro. St. Michael also has helped with materials and funds for special walkers built by a priest, using them in rehabilitation with physically disabled people.

Another stop on the trip was the Village of Hope, which ministers to orphan children infected with HIV/AIDS. The group toured the Water Project, which has drilled  more than 600 wells in the past 25 years to provide clean, safe water.

The Kalida mission group took medical supplies donated by St. Rita’s Medical Center in Lima for numerous health care and outreach programs. They also took clothes and toys for the orphans.

“The uniqueness of the trip for me was face of the orphans and the reality of this huge problem in Africa — about 800,000 orphans in Tanzania alone,” Fr. Alt says. “There are a huge number of new orphans each year.”

He adds the group stayed at a school of theology and became interested in a project taken on by some of the workers there. Each person took $5 out of their wages each month to start a school in a nearby village. The school is now built, but has no electricity, clean water, playground equipment or funds to pay teachers.

The relationship between St. Michael and Tanzania started several years ago when two men from the African country came to tell the parish about the need for $7,000 to $10,000 for pipes and a pumping system for the orphanage.

After the parish held a mission fest last fall, the group decided to visit Tanzania to see how important the project was to the orphanage.

Fr. Alt, who has traveled to Guatemala for a number of mission trips, says the needs of the orphans are great. “In a lot of orphanages, if they need to make room, they’ll take in younger kids and the older children have to leave and may end up in a tough situation,” he explains.

“My sense is just the wider perspective of the needs of God’s family around the world,” he adds. “To have our minds and perspectives opened up to the struggles of humanity in other places in the world — eventually some people come on board and embrace some issue that pulls their attention beyond our own little world here.

“It helped to put a ‘real face’ on the continuing struggles of humanity around the globe,” Fr. Alt says. “In fact, the whole mission trip did this for us from many different perspectives. We found the people of Tanzania to be a very welcoming and hospitable people and we found our spiritual lives enriched even through the celebration of Mass in Swahili.”