For 23 years, Service Over Self, a faith-based community service program begun by Crawford Street United Methodist Church, has been helping Vicksburg residents who are unable to help themselves.

For one week each year, Service Over Self attracts adults and teens from eighth grade through college from area churches and church groups from out-of-town, who work under the supervision of adults to help repair, replace and at times remodel homes for the people who are either unable to or can’t afford to do the work.

For 23 years, Daniel Renfroe has been a part of helping make lives better.

“I started the summer after my freshman year in high school,” he said. “That was the first year. Crawford Street did it the first year by itself, and it worked well. The second year, they invited Hawkins (United Methodist Church), which is the church I belong to, and every time (after) we added more and more churches, I think in one year we had about 15 different churches, so it’s grown through the community.”

Renfroe’s first involvement in Service Over Self was inspired by his church’s youth director.

“None of us had a clue what it was. They just said, ‘We’re going to have a summer mission project and we went. I ended up loving it — the people and the type of work — so I just kept doing it every year.”

Part of the reason he enjoyed SOS, he said, was his interest in construction.

“My grandfather was a civil engineer; a structural engineer. He built a railroad bridge,” Renfro said. “He taught me a lot about carpentry, so I was always pretty handy, and I’d go to work on houses, so it was a natural fit.”

Another reason was the opportunity to become involved in the community and help the people who lived in it, “People who live right around you and interact with you on a day-to-day basis.

“I just kept coming back after I graduated high school and be back in the summers after college,” he said. “I just kept participating. Others have done this as well. We’ve got a pretty good group of college-age people or people helping right after college.”

Former volunteers, he said, still return to help. “It kind of catches on, and people keep coming back well after college,” he said.

Renfroe’s current participation in Service Over Self now includes more than just working on a home or supervising a crew. He’s involved in helping the program continue and is a part of the team that tours the city looking for prospective residents to help.

“I help organize it, and starting about March, we start looking at houses,” he said. “A large part of this no one ever sees is the meetings we have after work, where everyone goes around talking to the people we’re potentially going to be helping and looking at what needs to be done — what their needs are — and trying to prioritize which houses we’re going to work on each year.

“I like the construction aspect and I just like being able to help people.”

Also, he said, each year Service Over Self is like a family reunion.

“A lot of these people, this is the only time of the year I see them,” Renfroe said. “We all get together for this one event, so it’s really good to see them for this one event it’s really good to see a lot of people come together to make an impact.”

He said the program hasn’t changed significantly in terms of its format over the years, adding the goal to help those less fortunate the process used by the program to provide older homeowners relief remains hasn’t really changed.

“We’ve learned things over years, and made improvements, but the general basis of going around, how we select homes, the team structure, all those things have remained the same through the years,” he said. “We’ve just gotten more efficient how we do things.”

And the volunteers haven’t changed.

“The kids are hard workers, (but) they’re typical teenagers,” he said. “They’ll goof around, but at the end of the day, they get the work done. Some are more motivated than others. Usually, the adults will talk about how it’s fun to watch them mature over time. They may be a pain when they’re younger and then four years’ later they are someone you depend on to run a team.”

And the heat of the southern summer in June and July hasn’t changed.

“The heat takes it out of you. You work hard for 30, 45 minutes, then you’ve got to sit down,” he said.

“But when you work, you get the same feeling. That’s the real gratifying part of it; the impact you can have on someone’s life in a short period of time, helping somebody live in a better home.”