CAIRO, Ill. -- "Bring people to the cross, then duck."

That sentiment represents the success of YouthWorks!, a Minneapolis-based multidenominational youth mission organization going on its sixth summer in Cairo and in other cities and towns across the country. Each week a different group of volunteers comes in, bunks at Two Rivers Ministries at the former St. Joseph Catholic School and lends a helping hand to a community in need.

"Everything centers around God," said leader Nyesha Smith of Detroit. "We realize we are real and God is real. It's so good to be with the students. They're so quiet at first and now they're running around showing everyone how much they love God. The group just exploded."

Thus the need to duck, she said.

"God has something big planned for Cairo," Smith said. "It starts with him, not us."

Junior high and high school students from St. Julia's Catholic Church in Chicago and from a church in North Carolina became close friends after spending the week together painting the exterior of a house using donated supplies.

One group tends a garden an earlier group planted with okra, tomatoes, squash and other fresh vegetables in raised beds on a vacant lot. The garden is for people in the community to feed their families. Some other students visit DayStar, a local nursing home, or a home for the disabled to spend time with residents there.

FRED LYNCH ~ flynch@semissourian.com Youngsters played games at the Kids Club with YouthWorks! members at Tigert Memorial Methodist Church in Cairo, Ill.

Another group spends its afternoons with Kids Club for Cairo for children ages 5 to 10 at Tigert Memorial United Methodist Church, where they played games outdoors, made craft projects and learned Bible stories. Leaders at Tigert Memorial invited YouthWorks! staffer Dishon Kamwesa, a Kenyan-born man from Columbus, Ohio, to speak at a Sunday morning service.

Along with the community projects, leaders of YouthWorks! lead prayer walks, worship services and reach out to the community to show God's love. They hold a weekly community cookout and offer things for children to do throughout the week in a town that has almost nothing for young people to do to keep them out of trouble.

One component of the program involves helping first the elderly, then the unemployed and underemployed with home repairs, but its leaders see their work more as a ministry. The organization says it doesn't count the number of houses it has helped repair over the years.

"It's about service, not about counting houses," said Whitney Worthy, a student at The University of Mississippi and one of the leaders of the group, before she climbed up a ladder to wield a paintbrush on a home. "We try to keep our focus around serving."

Renee Murray, 15, a member of St. Julia's in Chicago, said serving a week with YouthWorks! was a life-changing experience for her.

"I knew my faith could be so much stronger," Murray said. "This has been a huge blessing. It helped me realize about my faith and what I can do. This made it real to me."

lredeffer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160