BY JANICE GIBBS | TELEGRAM STAFF

It was hectic, but a lot was accomplished Wednesday at Our Lady of the Angels Maternity Shelter in Temple.

Thirty-six college students descended on the shelter prepared to tackle multiple tasks.

“It’s organized chaos,” said Brenda Parker, social worker at the shelter, right before she took off to pick up sandwiches for the laborers.

JaLeta Tidmore, shelter administrator, arrived with rakes and shovels, just as the truck showed up carrying the sod the students would lay in the yard.

Inside, students were upstairs cleaning windows, installing screens, straightening up a common room, deodorizing the couch and the toys.

“It smells really nice,” two of the students told Tidmore as they headed outside.

Our Lady of the Angels is a 90-day emergency shelter for homeless pregnant women and their children. It opened 16 years ago.

It is one of the few shelters that allow mothers to bring their other children with them, Tidmore said. Mothers of any age over age 18 are welcome. The shelter can house up to 12 at a time and that includes the mothers and their children.

The goal of the shelter is to make sure its residents are taken care of medically and are connected with available social services.

Rachel Depoy, one of the shelter’s house parents, takes care of the residents in the evening and is on hand if there’s an emergency.

“If there’s a child that needs to go to school I’ll take them,” Depoy said. “It’s a rewarding job.”

The current shelter resident is leaving in the next day or so, and two more moms and their children are expected to arrive early next week, Tidmore said.

Cory Strecker was leading the group of volunteers from the St. Thomas chapter of Students Today Leaders Forever located in St. Paul, Minn.

Two buses of students headed south to visit different communities on their way to a common city, which is Austin.

The bus at the maternity shelter stopped in St. Joseph, Mo., and Lexington, Mo., before landing in Temple, Strecker said.

Strecker said during the planning stage he called someone at the city of Temple to get ideas on where they could volunteer. He was passed on to the United Way of Central Texas, which connected the group to the Our Lady of the Angels.

“We stay in churches along the way, sleeping on floors, in sleeping bags,” he said.

On Tuesday, they spent the night at Bethel Church in Temple.

The students are required to spend 40 hours volunteering each semester and this trip will take care of those hours.

“I think that’s why some sign up, but they ultimately find it to be a rewarding experience,” Strecker said.

The balmy weather in Texas was a positive, considering snow was in the forecast for St. Paul.

Shamira Sirr, a senior marketing major, was outside shoveling dirt preparing the yard for the sod.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” Sirr said.

Jerry Samu, vice president of the maternity shelter board, was on hand to guide the students in their projects. He had a couple of students edging around the shrubs in the middle of the front yard.

“It’s fantastic seeing these young kids taking their spring break here doing community service rather than heading to Cancun,” Samu said. “We’re going to start cleaning some spouting in a minute.”