Youth tackle local projects

Hannah Fillpot saws through drywall as Tyler Brown holds the board in a room at Mission Missouri in Sikeston. The teens are among the 100 Missouri United Methodist Church Conference Council Work Camp participants from the St. Louis and Kansas City areas who are in Sikeston this week. Leonna Heuring, Staff

SIKESTON -- Amber McCommons sighed as she thought back to the work she and some of her peers did their first day at Mission Missouri.

The St. Louis ninth grader said it took all day to clean out a large room full of supplies and toss out expired food items at the faith-based organization's building on Ruth Street in Sikeston.

"It was really hard. We didn't know how much food was here," McCommons said as she scanned the neatly organized cans of juice, fruit and vegetables, bottles of water and boxes of dried food. "We had to bleach everything and sweep and mop."

McCommons is one of 103 youth participants in the Workcamp Mission sponsored by Missouri's United Methodist Church Conference Council on Youth Ministries.

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