SELMA, Ala.  For a group of Methodists from Appleton, Wis., the opportunity to help rebuild a burned-out church was a give-and-take mission.
The (Appleton) Post-Crescent reported the group gave their time to rebuild the black Baptist church destroyed by an arsonist in 2002, but took lessons about life back to Wisconsin with them.
"I think we'll leave with a sense of hope that goes beyond what you can read about in the newspaper," said the Rev. Jane Voigts, associated pastor of First United Methodist Church of Appleton.
"We all stayed healthy and had smooth sailing and got a lot of work done," said volunteer Shelby Knezel.
Voits, Knezel and eight members of the church arrived in two vans Sept. 14 to help rebuild Sandridge Missionary Baptist Church near Selma.
The 1,000-mile trip was arranged through the National Coalition for Burned Churches, which helps rebuild burned houses of worship throughout the country. The group said about 20 churches are burned each month in the United States.
The group said the mission was special because Selma played a key role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
In addition to working on the church, the volunteers took time to visit Alabama civil rights sites in Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma, the newspaper reported.
They conducted a service and followed the path of civil rights marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where 600 marchers headed to Montgomery were beaten by Alabama state troopers on March 7, 1965.
"It was pretty powerful," Knetzel said. "It's very different in that there's only a narrow sidewalk and they walked in twos, so we walked in twos also."
The Rev. Timothy Stromas, Sandridge's pastor, said his church took out an $85,000 bank loan to help pay for materials to rebuild the church. Volunteers from First United joined others who paid their own expenses to provide labor on the project.
