Valley teens serve area needs during conference

High enthusiasm beat out high heat as an army of youth volunteers swept through the South Valley in a labor of love and service.

The sun’s beams didn’t stop or slow some 50 youth volunteers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as they worked to beautify the Granite Hills campus Friday — one of several projects taking place across the area.

Youth volunteers were removing cinder blocks, weeding gardens and power-washing the sidewalks — anything that needed to be done.
All of them were, in a sense, giving up their summer to contribute their time and service to the projects, Granite Hills site supervisor Andrew Gilstrap said.

“These kids, a lot of them sacrificed vacation time,” Gilstrap said as he scanned the campus, hard-working boys and girls scattered about.
Gilstrap had a smile on his face and a camera in his hands.

“Dedication, love, service,” he said. “I think it’s incredible that people at such a young age want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.”

Granite Hills was just one place where the youth members are helping out; the rest of the 200 to 300 youth were spread throughout Tulare County late last week and this weekend, donating their time to community service projects for their annual youth conference.

Various LDS congregations combined their youth groups — teens from ages 14 to 18 — for a three-day event in which they participate in service projects during the day and attend meetings and dances in the evenings.

The first day was Thursday.

“Yesterday we were just getting to know each other and making new friends,” Samantha Wooten, 14, said. “It was a lot of fun.”

As a first-time participant, Wooten said she plans to make it back to the conference in coming years.

“I just want to leave this place knowing that it looks better and cleaner,” Wooten said as she yanked a weed from a plant bed she was working on at Granite Hills.

Groups of conference participants were appointed to work at schools and other sites in Porterville, Lindsay, Hanford and Visalia. Every year, the majority of the volunteers seek a site in need of project assistance and receive reference of specific areas from the host city.

This year it was Porterville, and Granite Hills provided a landscape with plenty of maintenance to keep the volunteers busy.

Jerry O’Neil, one of two grounds keepers at the school, directed the volunteers and helped to transfer cinder blocks, coming back and forth in one of the campus carts.

“It’s nice to get some help like this, before school starts, to help us get some of this done early. The [volunteers] always come up here to use our facilities,” O’Neil said. “They just pay us back, symbolically, by helping out.”

The participants broke the ice and got to know each other at a dance, which took place on the pyramid, and a conference, in the mini gymnasium, Thursday. In the past, LDS conferences have utilized the Granite Hills pool and gym, O’Neil said.

Some volunteers drove in from Visalia to participate.

-- Contact Sabrina Ziegler at 784-5000.