By Carolyn Vanbrocklin

ELON UNIVERSITY

CATHOLIC CAMPUS MINISTRY

Truitt Center

Campus Box 2960 Elon, NC 27244 336-278-7355

SUNDAY MASS TIMES:

Elon Community Church 6pm & 9pm

WEDNESDAY NIGHT

CATHOLIC:

Holt Chapel (South Campus) 7:45 - Rosary, 8:00 - Mass

8:30 - Program

RECONCILIATION:

Before Sunday Mass or by appointment

Campus Minister

Fr. Gerry Waterman, OFM Conv gwaterman@elon.edu

Administrative Assistant T Huynh-Duc ccm@elon.edu

Faculty Advisor Dr. Chris Leupold

cleupold@elon.edu

Student Leaders Christen Aquino, President

Justin Sposato, Vice President Erin Bradley

Kara Cowdrick Melissa Gaisser

Courtney Graham Peter Guyton Erin Sawyer Tracy Schell

Erin Silva

The Catholic Phoenix ——————————————————————————————————ELON UNIVERSITY, SPRING 2008

While many students were enjoy-ing a restful spring break, a group of nine from Elon University’s Catholic Campus Ministry drove to Palm Coast, FL, to help build a house for Habitat for Humanity.

The small, one-story house has three bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen and open areas for a living room and din-ing room. It is simple, but one family will call it home.

Our group drove south on Easter Sunday and spent the next four days finish-ing the house that had been worked on by several previous groups of students from around the country participating in Habi-tat’s Collegiate Challenge. “Many people in the group hadn’t worked with Habitat before, so this was a good experience for them,” said T Huynh-Duc, CCM’s Administrative As-sistant who accompanied us on the trip.

Upon first arriving at the worksite, the house was up, but the lawn was entirely sand, and the house

had concrete floors and drywall. During the first day, we lay sod and did some landscaping, transforming the sandy lawn to grass with a garden in the front yard. During the second day, we painted the en-tire interior of the house.

“It was so satisfying to see the changes that our group made, even from day one. We came to the house, and there was a dustbowl of a yard. We left that day, and the house had a lawn,” said freshman Katie Dirks.

The group learned many new skills, including carpentry. Perhaps the most challenging part of the week was the two days spent laying down hardwood floors and installing shoe molding in all of the rooms and the hallways. We had to snap the flooring together using a rubber mallet and make sure that there were no

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A l t e rna t ive Spr ing B reak 2 0 0 8

Elon  CCM  students  make  a  difference during their Spring Break  

Right: Caitlin McDonnell, Justin Sposato, and Emily Regan lay down sod in the back yard.

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CCM students Nolan Wildfire and Kara Cowdrick take in the view in Costa Rica. Nolan and Kara are spending the Spring 2008 semester in Costa Rica through Elon University’s Study Abroad program.

L ike the three Wise Men descending upon

Bethlehem with gifts from far and wide, a new crop of Elon students re-cently embarked on a journey to Costa Rica armed with housewarming gifts from across the United States to give to their generous Costa Rican host fami-lies. Whether it was saltwater taffy from New Jersey, a bottle of Haw River White wine from the local Grove Win-ery, or merely an Elon shirt from the university bookstore, each student brought something that represented a small part of themselves and where they were from. While I likewise brought a gift that represented who I was, it was from somewhere I had never been before. In fact, it was a gift from another country. Having been to Costa Rica prior to my semester study abroad and having met the family with whom I would be staying, I had a leg-up on the rest of the students in that I knew ahead of time what to expect. As a result, when it came time to find a gift for my gracious and loving host family, I called my uncle, a priest in the military, and asked him for his help in procuring a special gift for my family. Having traveled the world many times over, it took him no time at all to select two small mementos for me. The first was a hand-carved, wooden statue of the

Virgin Mary from Bethlehem and the second a hand-carved, wooden ro-sary from Jerusalem. Without hesita-tion, I snatched up the gifts and thanked my uncle a million times over for all his help. These gifts would be perfect! After getting settled in what would be my bedroom for the next three months, I slowly made my way to the dinner table with my newfound family. Throughout dinner, I anxiously awaited the opportunity to turn over the gifts that I had brought. Finally, with each of their plates clean, I unveiled the gifts for them to open. As they meticu-lously shed the tissue paper layer by layer, my heart beat faster and faster knowing the joy and excitement that would stir. Finally peeling away the last piece of paper, my mother's eyes widened as she looked at the statue in awe. Unprepared to explain the significance of the piece and too tired to put together coherent sentences i n S p a n i s h , I s t u t t e r e d t h e word "Bethlehem" and her eyes grew larger. Little by little and with more hand gestures than a game of Charades, I explained that my uncle received the statue when he was in Bethlehem and blessed it for their family. In a shriek of noise, my mother wrapped her arms around me and thanked me profusely, saying "Muchas Gracias!" more times than I could count.

W h i l e I d o n ' t k n o w the Spanish word for "statue" and probably never will, what I do know is that Catholicism is Catholicism no mat-ter where you are in the world. It binds people from all different backgrounds and ethnicities into a common brother-hood and sisterhood. Whether on the streets in Africa or at Easter Sunday Mass somewhere surrounded by family and friends, it’s as my Costa Rican mother says, "En Cristo, hay vida"...In Christ, there is life.

A Student’s Witness By Nolan M. Wildfire

Our Faith Knows no Boundaries:

Allow me to introduce Dr. Chris Le-upold, an industrial psychologist pro-fessor, who serves as CCM’s faculty advisor starting this past year. Dr. Leupold originally hails from Albany, NY, has been a professor at Elon for the past 5 years. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame, his Master’s degree from UNC-Charlotte, and his Ph.D. from Wayne State University in Detroit. Dr. Leupold and his wife Helen have three younger children, whom one may likely see accompany-ing him to Mass on the weekends. His two girls are 11 and 8, and his younger son is 3. In his free time, Dr. Leupold enjoys spending time playing with his kids and reading. We are glad to have Dr. Leupold’s support for CCM.

Meet CCM’s Faculty Advisor

By Justin Sposato

ASB 2008, continued from page 1

visible cracks. It was also tough to work around closets and corners.

“It was hard work,” junior Caitlin McDonnell admitted. “But knowing that we helped build a house for someone who otherwise would not have had one was really satisfying. I felt very accomplished.”

By the end of the week, the house was nearly ready for the family to move in. The trip was also a great time to forge bonds of friendship. Many of us didn’t know the other stu-dents before coming on the trip, but

after working together on the house and living with each other in a church gym for a week, we all became close. For Huynh-Duc, it was nice to see students working together as a team.

“It’s amazing to see a group of students come together for such a great cause. After be-ing together for a week, every-one got to know each other, and by the end of it, we all became good friends,” he said.

Because of the success of this year’s trip, Catholic Campus Ministry plans to con-tinue offering an Alternative

Spring Break service trip experience to students each year.

Thank you to all the donors who made this trip possible.

Left: The group is proud of their accomplishments on the final day of working on the Habitat house. Below: Justin, Andrew Crispin, and Nate Smith use the circular saw to cut the wood flooring.

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Be a Kid Again O ver winter term, a group of students from CCM

received a chance to take a break from rigorous college academics and revert to their childhood. CCM took a trip to the Boys and Girls Club of Burlington and played with the children there on the afternoon of January 18th. The Club acts as an after school program for over 50 local children, providing them with a safe place to do their homework and play with others while their parents work. Immediately upon entering the gym, the children were visibly eager to start playing with us, and seeing as we

went on "fun Friday," they h a d t h r e e whole hours to play. The vol-unteers split into four loca-tions: the game room, the craft r o o m, t h e

BINGO room, and the gym. For the next three hours, the kids did their best to re-mind us all what it is like to have tons of energy that never runs out. From countless games of BINGO to never-ending games of tag, the youngsters constantly occupied all the volunteers. The last activity was a CCM versus BGC dodge ball game, which left everyone a little short of breath. At the end of the day, CCM left the Boys and Girls Club with new friends, great memories, and in desperate need of a nap, but it doesn’t end there. Because of the desire of the students to return, CCM will visit their friends at the Boys and Girls Club once more on Friday afternoon of April 18th.

By Courtney Graham

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The Catholic Phoenix Catholic Campus Ministry Newsletter Elon University Campus Box 2960 Elon, N.C. 27244-2010

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COFFEE WITH FR. GERRY AT THE ACORN CAFE

One of the most important things for a Campus Minister is to be a presence on campus for stu-dents. Realizing this, Fr. Gerry makes himself

available to students at a popular cof-fee shop on campus, the Acorn Café, from 1:00-3:00PM on Mondays during the Spring semester to meet with stu-dents informally, chat over coffee, talk about life in general, spirituality, relig-ion, politics, etc. Please join him, or send him a text or IM message. Visit our website for more information. "It's great to see Father Gerry pop up on my buddy list. It is nice to know he is so accessible to students in ways that we are used to communi-cating — with instant messenger, text messaging, or in person over coffee!" - Erin Bradley

Visit our website: www.elon.edu/ccm

This March, for the second year, CCM hosted a Confirmation Retreat for the candi-dates of Blessed Sacrament and St. Julia’s Catholic Churches. The all-day event was staffed by seventeen of Elon’s Catholic stu-dents, including Erin Silva and Nick Ochsner, who will be confirmed this spring as well. "Since I am being confirmed myself this April, it was a great opportunity to help out with the retreat,” said Erin. “The kids got to see a college student going through the same process and realized that people of all ages are journeying towards faith every day.” The day was filled with fun activities, competitions, team building, and praise and worship music led by Claire and David Tamayo, a father-daughter team

from Blessed Sacrament Church. Claire participated in the Confirmation Retreat last year, and felt inspired by the Spirit to serve at it this year as a singer and a co-team leader. The retreat allowed CCMers to share their faith experiences with the high school students, and in turn, learn more about the progression of their own faith journeys through their time at Elon.

By Christen Aquino Confirmation Retreat