Q&A: 25 years of mission through OMP
09-02-2011Q&A: 25 years of mission through OMP
Ozark Mission Project (OMP) is a home-grown ministry that began in 1986 with 35 volunteers and campers at a single weeklong camp.Now, volunteers come from as far away as Nebraska to be a part of OMP’s Arkansas summer mission experiences, which this year included 12 camps and almost 700 campers.
This year, OMP celebrates its 25th year in ministry, and will mark the milestone with an Oct. 29 celebration at Lakewood UMC North Little Rock. OMP executive director Nancy Mulhearn spoke recently with Arkansas United Methodist editor Amy Forbus.For those who may have never experienced OMP, will you give our readers a brief description?
OMP is about bringing youth and adults together to go out and serve in a community those who need home repair, those who need visiting, and sharing God’s word and God’s love, and to know they’re valued as a child of God.
How long have you been involved in OMP?
I started out in 1989 as an adult driver, and I did that for about five years. Then I was asked to be a volunteer program person, and I did that for two or three years.
And then one year a need came up for a director about a week before camp started, and I didn’t know any better! So that’s when I started directing. I did that for five or six years.In 2000, my husband’s job transferred us to Oklahoma. At that time, I was chairperson of the steering committee, so I had to resign from it when we moved.
A year or two after I left, Renee Henson became the person in charge, so program meetings and committee meetings moved to the Ft. Smith/Van Buren area. I was only two hours away, in Tulsa, so I drove back to meetings.
In 2004, OMP decided to hire an executive director. I applied and was hired, so for two years I was executive director while living in Oklahoma. Then, fortunately, my husband’s job allowed us to move back to Conway in 2006. So of course, I moved back here with the job and have been with it ever since.
In addition to creating the executive director position, what kinds of things have come along with OMP’s expansion?
Developing the committees—not that we have more committees, but that the committees are more involved in the whole process. The program committee is more involved in planning worship, in planning activities on Sunday, and in the evening activities during camp.
So you’re going to get a pretty consistent experience from camp to camp all summer.
Yes, exactly.
How has OMP changed over the years?
We’ve added two middle school camps, and also a college age mission trip, which we do in January on semester break. The college group has gone to Rio Bravo, and to New Orleans several years to help with the Katrina and Rita survivors. In 2012, we’re making plans to go to Joplin.
Another thing that has changed is the tool trailers. In previous years, churches had to bring ladders and lawn mowers and all that stuff. OMP has purchased three trailers, and we move the community tools around from location to location. I think the tool trailers have helped us be much more user-friendly from a youth director and church point of view.
Our training has improved. Our college staff training is really in-depth. They come in on a Friday and stay until Wednesday.
We do a church training, where churches who sign up for OMP meet with us and we go over our training manual, go over changes from the year before, just to bring everybody on board. We need to be reminded of why we’re coming to OMP and what our purpose is.
So we train our churches, we train our college staff, we train our volunteer staff. Our directors have meetings so they’re all on the same page, which helps with consistency.
So there’s really a lot of advance preparation.
Oh, yes, it’s year-round. We’ll start in September with our first program meeting for next summer—planning the theme, the T-shirts, the lapel pin, the morning watches, the evening worships. As soon as camps end and we are finished crunching numbers, we start on the next year.
What are some things that have stayed the same?
The importance of the relationship with the neighbor. [Editor’s note: At OMP, all people the campers serve are called “neighbors.”]
And the importance of our evening worship service—we’ve coordinated so our morning worship devotion, our lunch devotion, which goes with them to the job site so they actually share a devotion with their neighbor as they’re sharing their lunch, and then the evening worship service—all three use the same Scripture passage, so that they’re delving deeper into that Scripture than just hitting it one time.
On the lighter side, the games we do are intentional. When campers arrive, we do ice-breakers and warm-ups and things like that. As Sunday goes on, we do consensus, where they have to communicate and listen to each other, so they’ll start putting it into practice before they even get on the job site where decisions have to be made.
We have a wonderful safety record that we are so proud of, and we watch very carefully. Safety is of prime importance, both for our campers and our neighbors.Another thing that has stayed the same is the layering of OMP. We start with the youth campers, then we have adult drivers who help oversee the youth campers, then we have a college staff that oversees the work and the evening activities of the driver and the youth camper. Then the next layer is the volunteer staff—adults that oversee the college staff. So we’re very intentional about layering our leadership.
We’re also very good about empowering our college staff after they’ve been paid staff, to go on and be volunteer staff, co-directors and directors.
So do you have a handful of folks who have come back and directed after being paid staff?
Yes, we have a lot. More than a handful. In fact, we had a director and co-director at West Memphis, at El Dorado and at Rudy. They’ve graduated from college and are now in the workplace, coming back to direct. They’ve made OMP a part of their lives.
Then we’ll have those who have been directing for 10 years, they’ll take on a new co-director and train them, so that they can go on to be a director.
What can attendees expect at the October celebration?
We have a reunion committee of seven people who have been planning. There will be service opportunities, a slide show, dinner, sharing of OMP stories from campers, staff and neighbors, worship and Communion.
We’re creating a journal, too. Right now, it’s over 200 pages. We’re including quotes from neighbors and campers, and it’s going to be available to purchase at the reunion event.
About the Oct. 29 celebration
Lakewood UMC, 1922 Topf Road in North Little Rock, will host the Ozark Mission Project 25th anniversary celebration.
Doors open at 3:30 p.m., and all guests are welcome. The event is free, but the planning team requests that attendees pre-register by Oct. 21.
To learn more or make a reservation, visit ozarkmissionproject.org.
Sharing OMP’s impact
While Ozark Mission Project provides tangible improvement to the homes of its neighbors, it also offers benefits that last longer than a paint job or a day of yardwork—for both the neighbors and the workers.
The excerpt below comes from a letter written in 1987 by Betty Gean Eifling of Grady UMC, after she attended OMP. She felt so strongly about her experience that she sent the letter to her entire family.
“We talk a lot about being people of faith,” says Eifling’s pastor, the Rev. Lee Zuehlke. “This is an un-solicited letter written to family about what it means to this woman to put faith in action.”
Eifling discovered recently a copy of her letter, and she shared it with her prayer group. Her pastor shared it with the Arkansas United Methodist, and with Eifling’s permission, we share this excerpt with our readers.
July 8, 1987
Dear Family,
This is a report on my Ozark Mission Project - namely because I don’t have anything else to write about - unlike other relatives who have made trips to Europe, Australia, and other faraway places.
For those of you who may not know what Ozark Mission Project is, let me explain. It is a church sponsored camp for young people, ages 13-18, to work for the elderly, poor or handicapped, performing jobs these people are unable or have no resources to do for themselves. I signed up as an adult leader from our church.
My experience that week reaffirmed my faith in the young people of this land. We were divided into “family” groups which worked together the entire week. I had one young man and three girls in my “family.” They worked hard and without complaint in the ever-present heat and humidity and the sometimes present wasps.
Our first day was our easiest—we trimmed trees and washed windows. Tuesday and Wednesday our assignment was to paint a house which was in terrible condition. We had to scrape most of it before we could paint. I must say it looked like a different house when we finished.
Thursday, we went to an apartment where everything was arranged so a wheelchair could be maneuvered; however, the elderly woman who had just moved there was not in a wheelchair. She was a dwarf, which meant she couldn’t reach her sink or stove or anything else. We made her some steps to walk up and stand on to get to her sink, and a low shelf to place utensils on.
On Friday, we did yard work for an elderly woman with diabetes who had just had four toes removed. She had a big yard which had grown up with weeds higher than my head. It really looked pretty when we got through.
Another aspect of our mission was to share our lunch each day with the person we were working for. We carried an ice chest with sandwich materials and a jug of tea and water each day. The people really enjoyed having somebody to visit with them as some almost never have anybody to talk to, and probably never any young people.
Do you all remember when we were in our younger years growing up, before we had electricity, and we had a 50-pound block of ice delivered a couple of times a week? We didn’t get to use any ice except at meal time. I still remember how refreshingly delicious that iced tea was on a sweltering summer day—it has never been the same in an air-conditioned environment. Ice tea tasted that good again! Not one home we were in had any sign of air conditioning.
Some of our jobs were a good hour and a half from camp, so we spent some time commuting. (I almost learned to like LOUD rock music.)
