Robin Drake

Shay Pierson is part of a Student Life Camp group from Jackson, N.C., that is taking time this week to work on the Toccoa, Ga., home of Estelle Jones, 97.

For one group of young people, paintbrushes full of paint help provide a lesson in service to others.

The teens are a part of Student Life Camp and traveled from Jackson, N.C., to spend this week in the sweltering heat helping a Toccoa woman paint her home.

“We go and we do a mission project every year during the summer,” Lenny Moore said interim youth pastor for the camp. “The kids choose to do missions, and they teach the kids to serve God by serving other people.”

Estelle Jones has lived in Toccoa all her life, and at the age of 97 still lives in the house she lived in with her late husband, Johnny Henry. The home is small and neat, filled with a lifetime of photos and memories. While watching the teens paint Tuesday, Jones said it is nice to have a little help freshening things up at her home.

“They are doing really well looking after me,” she said, smiling. “I’m not going to know what to do in such a clean house.”

Shay Pierson is one of those students working on the house. She said the work is actually fun.

“It is really great because I love working with houses and I love serving people,” Pierson said. “The idea that we are doing it for the Lord, since we are doing it at a mission camp is really fun and really cool.”

Habitat for Humanity donated all the paint for the project and helped coordinate the teens. The group working on Jones’ home is part of a larger effort that is working all across Stephens County. Local coordinator Vera Natale said other projects include painting and sprucing up other structures.

“There will be the painting of a room at the Boys and Girls Clubs (of Toccoa-Stephens County, on Whitman Street in Toccoa),” Natale said. “We also will be going and cutting some grass for some elderly people (and) some people who are handicapped in the area. Some of the Habitat (for Humanity) homeowners are needing some gutters cleaned out and some other odd jobs like that that we are trying to get done.”

The Student Life Camp group is staying at the Georgia Baptist Assembly facilities in Toccoa.