Last week the Wesley College Ministry from the University of Arkansas came to do a service project at Fort Frederica.  The University of Arkansas is one large university with many different campuses scattered throughout the state.  Each one has a Wesley College Ministry group to reach out to the college students.  Usually the campus ministers do double duty, also serving a church in the area.  During their Christmas break, the Wesley College Ministries get together and do a joint mission project.  This year they came to Georgia’s coast.

During the three days they were on St. Simon’s Island, they stayed at Epworth by the Sea.  They visited the Methodist Museum and worked at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.  Every day they spent a couple of hours doing a service project and learned something about their United Methodist heritage.

This group of 30 young people and their campus ministers visited Fort Frederica for their daily service project combined with some history.  Because the group was so large, we let them self-divide into four smaller groups to help with different projects.  One group took all the plants out of the butterfly garden.  This will be replanted in a couple of weeks with new, native plants.  The garden will become part of the Rosalyn Carter Butterfly Trail.

Another group worked at one of my park jobs, picking up trash along the road.  Wearing reflector vests and carrying buckets, they fanned out along the road and quickly cleared it of trash.  Tom took charge of a group washing all the waysides.  I had a group that put together 250 Jr. Ranger books in a production line in the library.  I had the only indoor, sitting down job, so my group filled up really quickly.  But all the students worked really hard and there were no complaints, whatever job they selected.

I really enjoyed talking to and listening to my group of students.  They are from all over Arkansas, so they have been getting to know each other during the week.  I talked to them about John and Charles Wesley and their time at Frederica.  The students had lots of good questions and were very interested in learning more about the history.  After working for an hour, Ranger Sarah gave them a tour of Frederica so they could learn more of the story.

The Wesley College Ministry group left Fort Frederica about 11:30.  They were heading up to Savannah for lunch and another short mission project.  After their service project, they were going to get a group picture by the John Wesley statue in Savannah.  Then they were heading back to Arkansas.

We enjoyed having this group of young, energetic people at Fort Frederica.  I especially appreciated their joyful faith and their enthusiasm for being United Methodist.  With wonderful young people like these, I have renewed hope for the future of the United Methodist Church.