Steve and Carole Schenk

Steve and Carole Schenk

Volunteers Steve and Carole Schenk

For Steve and Carole Schenk, Mission Builders assignments are a two-way street.

They love using their skills to help churches, and they love expanding their own skills.

“When all is said and done, we get just as much or more out of the experience working with a congregation as we put into it,” says Steve, a carpenter who serves as a Mission Builders project foreman.

For one thing, says Carole, when you spend six months living in a 26-foot trailer, “life narrows down to only the necessities. You see what you don’t need. That spills over to our life as we come back home.”

Another plus is engaging other cultures, like members of Our Saviors Lutheran Church on the Rocky Boy Indian reservation in Box Elder, Montana.

“They bent over backwards and did anything to help us, and fed and supported us and volunteered,” says Steve. He and Carole were particularly impressed by their commitment to passing on cultural traditions to the younger generation.

“We are never above learning, and I’m learning relationship skills, working together as a team with people I have never met before,” says Carole.

Back at St. Thomas/Holy Spirit Church in the Sunset Hills area of St. Louis, Missouri, Steve works as a carpenter and Carole is becoming a hospice volunteer, inspired by a nurse she met through Mission Builders. And they’re both looking forward to what they’ll learn on their next assignment.