Clean-Up, Fix-Up Campaign Lets Teens Show What Service Means

How they spent their summer vacation: traveling to Orange County to take hold of brushes, rakes, mops and brooms in a quest to help others.

More than 1,600 youngsters from across the nation swarmed 18 parks, recreation centers, mobile home parks and other locations in Santa Ana and Costa Mesa to paint, clean, repair and give meaning to the idea of service as part of the nondenominational Soul Survivor summer camp.

“Usually at camp we’d be in a seminar or burning up in our tent,” said Lauren Edwards, 14, of Port Hueneme. “This is a lot more fun. You get to do something.”

Edwards was with 324 others giving a coat of red paint to the no-parking zones at Centennial Regional Park’s parking lot in Santa Ana.

The daylong project was part of the five-day camp put on by the nonprofit group Soul Survivor, based in Costa Mesa.

“It’s all about actions,” said Gareth Dickinson, director of the activities. “About showing the good news of Jesus Christ. It’s not necessarily the words we speak, but our actions too.”

The camp, in its fourth year, was set up at the Newport Dunes campground, where organizers pitched more than 500 small tents.

During the day, the teenagers painted curbs, fences and railings at Carl Thornton Park and Centennial Regional Park in Santa Ana and delivered food and gift certificates to the elderly in Costa Mesa. They painted an asphalt bike trail in Madison Park in Santa Ana, cleaned and painted the Shalimar Learning Center in Costa Mesa and weeded, cleaned and planted native plants at Santiago Park in Santa Ana.

As park visitors threw fishing lines into the pond, napped in the shade and watched their children ride bikes, the teenagers swept gutters, brushed off dirt from the curb and applied red paint throughout the parking lot.

“The goal is to get a new concept of worshiping God,” said Brian Akamine, a leader of the Centennial Park project. “Learning music and pouring your heart out in an assembly” is a demonstration of faith, he said. “But it’s also getting involved in the community.”