Twenty-five years ago, Bob Moss took a trip to Memphis, Tenn.
It changed his life and led to the development of Service Over Self, a program designed to use volunteers to help others have a better life by having a better, safer place to live.
“Service Over Self was something that was a college student ministry of a group in Memphis that we heard about here, and a guy, Rocky Miskelly, who was here as an assistant pastor at Crawford Street Church told us about it,” Moss said.
“We took a group of teenagers up there in 1991, me and Randy Stroud, who was a teacher here in town and was a youth minister. We took a dozen or more kids up there.”
“We became enamored with the program, where they were taking houses in the community they had discerned they wanted to work on, and for people who needed help and couldn’t get it otherwise. Then these groups came in from out of town, and they had a church there in town that housed them, Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis did it.”
“We said that was something we could do in Vicksburg to help the Vicksburg community,” Moss said, and it would also be fulfilling to the participants.
Moss said they were interested in expanding the program in Vicksburg to include youth and adults in addition to college students, but before committing to the project, volunteers would have to commit to traveling to Memphis for a week, so they could better understand the Service Over Self ministry.
After returning to Vicksburg, Moss and Stroud planned the program for Vicksburg, and as member of Crawford Street, he said he asked church officials if the program could be run from the church.
They agreed and it became an addition to the church’s mission program.
“What they put in is really allowing us to operate from there (the church),” Moss said, “but it’s really kind of an independent program.”
Moss said the Service Over Self mission project initially began at Crawford Street, with them seeking volunteers from the youth program and congregation, but hoped that eventually the project would include the entire community.
After the first year, Hawkins United Methodist Church was invited to participate, and the program grew from there.
“We started working on one house for a week, and then we started working in two houses for a week,” Moss said. “It’s grown to where kids from all over town, and maybe four or five churches will send kids there and maybe some money with them.”
“We have kids from out of town, who hear about it and want to come. Crawford Street houses them, and we still have volunteers in the community who help feed them. They’re (the students) supposed to pay a fee for the food and help pay for the materials, but fundraising during the year helps buy the materials, and then churches donate toward it, also,” Moss said.
The program has grown to the point Service Over Self works on 10 or 12 houses a year. This past year, Moss said, 125 youngsters participated with 40-50 adults assisting.
Moss, who is a contractor, tries to match the projects to the crews he has, remembering he is working with semiskilled and unskilled workers.
“We don’t try to take on a project that’s too big or too large, and you want to accomplish it in the time that’s involved or allocated to it,” he said. “Really, what we’re committed to is one week. It really lasts longer than a week, and you have a few workdays during the year to finish up or repair things.”
He said the City of Vicksburg helps select homes and other homes come from word-of-mouth.
“Someone in the neighborhood sees someone’s house being worked on, and they have something that needs done,” he said. He said a board spends time evaluating homes looking for a fulfilling site, “A family you want to work for and that we think we can fund. We only have so much money, so it’s a multi-prong decision, and several people have been involved in that.”
Moss said he gets involved for several reasons.
“It’s enjoying helping people, and then I enjoy construction or I wouldn’t be doing it, and I enjoy young people, too,” he said. “Having raised a family, they participated growing up; it’s very, very, fulfilling.
“I tell the participants every year I’ve got the best job because I get to see every site. I get to go around and answer questions, so I see all the volunteers, all the homeowners, I get to see everything, so I’m probably the only guy who gets to see the whole program, because I travel around to every site. And I get to see what’s going on when they come back and have meals.”
Funding for the program, he said, is very expensive.
“What we’re trying to do is ask a kid for $25 or $35 to pay for meals, and we’ll raise the money to buy the materials. We’re not asking anybody but the participants to pay; if they want to make a donation, fine,” he said.
Service Over Self, Moss said, is a project in which the community could get involved, “And it was something that was interesting at the time, and I thought Vicksburg could use that. I was correct, we’ve been doing it 25 years, and we’ve worked on more than 200 homes, so we’ve worked for more than 200 families.”
And what keeps the program going? Moss believes its inertia, adding the program is good for the community, and he believes the participants enjoy it.
“The volunteerism; I enjoy seeing young people giving of themselves, and it’s a multiple aspect reward. I see some adults I don’t suspect would go out and work like that, that they’d rather give donations. In reality, they find it’s more fulfilling than donating your money to a charity, to actually get to help somebody with your own two hands.”
“You get to know the people, the fulfillment level is infinitely higher.”
Sometimes, he said the program helps people get some of the basic, needs, like electricity and running water.
And some participants don’t stop after high school, he said, they come back when they’re in college and even as adults to volunteer.
“I’m going to go as long as I can,” Moss said. “I was not young when I started. We have people 80-year-olds instructing volunteers.”