Teens Change Lives One Home At A Time

Every time The News On 6 reports a story of young people in trouble, many viewers ask why we don't mention kids doing good things. We have one of those stories. News On 6's Rick Wells met a group of Texas teens who are working to improve homes and lives in a North Tulsa neighborhood.

The teenagers are here from the Aledo United Methodist Church in Aledo, Texas, a community just west of Fort Worth. They are working on some home rehab projects.

"For the last three years we've been down on the Texas Gulf Coast doing hurricane relief," said Clint Surratt.

Surratt says they've reroofed about 35 homes over the past few summers. They heard about the ice storm in December and contacted a local group and wondered if they could help.

"We cut all this brush yesterday and this morning trying to get better access to this house," said Surratt.

They'll add new paint and siding. Inside, there's a lot of sheet rock that needs to be replaced. They'll save what they can and replace what they can't. This is a big project and down the road there are several more.

There are more than 100 teens there with several adults to supervise. Lynda Chaplin knows the neighborhood and helped identify the projects. This one is special. Lynda says it will be a safe place for neighborhood kids.

"The building is here. We just needed to get the roof put on," said Lynda Chaplin.

So, part of the Texas group is working to get that done. Then, they'll move inside for some painting and clean up.

Lynda's dream is for a game room or a safe room. Whatever the neighborhood needs, this will be it. The kids from Texas are helping make that dream come true.

The Aledo United Methodist Church has been doing this kind of mission work for about 20 years. The kids bring their own tools and each one contributes about $250 to purchase the building materials they'll need.