Fort Worth Church, TCU Students Both Benefit from Volunteerism During Winter Storm

New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church of Fort Worth is known for helping the community — the church has held food giveaways during the pandemic — but the recent snowstorm and freezing temperatures left the church in need of a hand.

“The water was coming through the ceilings and I went into crisis mode,” New Mount Rose Pastor Kyev Tatum said.

Tatum knew cleanup was more than the church could handle alone. So he leaned on some students from the TCU Community Scholars Program and volunteers who had already helped him with the food giveaways.

“It was really sad because everyone has that church that they go back home to,” TCU sophomore and biology major Alexis Hunt said. “So, for Mount Rose to be that church, a home to people in the community, it was really sad to see that damage at the church.”

“I looked at the damage and was like wow, there’s so much water, so much burst pipe,” Jeremiah Hines said.

Hines, a movement science major, lent his muscle to the cleanup.

“It was a good experience shoveling snow,” he said. “We made masks for the community.”

Hines and Lance Minor are both TCU scholarship recipients through the TCU Community Scholars Program.

“I’m giving back to my community and I was just glad I could help,” said Minor, a news and media studies major.

TCU Community Scholars are student leaders selected from local high schools.  The program provides a four-year full academic scholarship.

“I really didn’t have the finances to go to college and I really didn’t think I’d ever attend,” Minor said.

The students don’t take the opportunity lightly.

“Yes, I got the scholarship but, I got the scholarship for a bigger reason,” Hines said. “It’s not just for me. It’s for me to be a servant at the end of the day.”

That service is priceless to New Mount Rose.

“Without those students I think we would have pretty much just been in a state of despair,” Tatum said. “But every time those students come they bring joy, they bring positivity, they bring energy.”

They bring all that, but even if they are volunteering like Hunt or working through the Community Scholars Program they leave with much more.

“I would definitely say it’s a rewarding feeling because opposed to the other thing I could have been doing which is doing homework or sitting at my desk I was actually helping people and it was a really rewarding feeling,” Hunt said.

“It feels like that’s what I’m supposed to do, to be a help, to be a servant,” Hines said.

The Community Scholars Program provides more than $6 million dollars each year in full-ride academic scholarships.

To learn more about the TCU Community Scholars Program click here.