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Perched on a rooftop full of holes, Christiana Ellard ’19 remembers having a few nerves.

As a �԰����� first-year, she’d barely moved into her dorm room before signing up for the San Antonio Plunge, a five-day service event that whisked her off �԰�����’s campus and into the San Antonio community, where she’d be part of a small team of fellow �԰����� students piecing a local resident’s roof back together. She’d never done any home repairs, didn’t know a soul on campus, and had no idea what she was getting into.

“I remember going into this trip nervous about the unknown,” Christiana recalls of her first trip, in the summer of 2015. “But once I got to meet my peers, our student leaders, and the residents we were helping, those nerves didn’t last long.”

More than 50 Tigers like Ellard typically take the Plunge each year, and are split up into smaller groups of ten or less, with each group assigned to help repair a different house. First-years typically make up a large part of each group, but sophomores, juniors and seniors are involved too—frequently returning after having strong bonding experiences with their fellow classmates, just as Ellard has returned to the trip for the past two years. The event is sponsored by �԰�����’s Chapel Fellowships.

“This type of service trip is a phenomenal opportunity for incoming first-year students to begin to build a solid foundation before beginning their college experience,” Ellard says. “You meet some amazing leaders—and you find yourself becoming a leader, too.”

Adam Toler ’20, another returning leader who took the Plunge in Summer 2017, says the event creates community, on and off �԰�����’s campus.

“There you are, stuck together in a room with ten other people you may have never met—helping a resident you don’t know fix their house—and you have to learn to work together,” Toler explains. “But what you see is that everybody who takes this trip, even if we don’t have the same type of personality, we end up banding together because we’re all doing the same work. The Plunge is just good practice at being accepting, when it comes down to it.”

During this year’s Plunge, Toler’s team worked with a homeowner who was forced to live in one room of a house because all her other rooms were uninhabitable.

“She started out very quiet and walked out of the rooms we were working in without saying much,” Toler recalls. “But as the days wore on, you’d see our interactions changing in little ways: She’d leave her room door open and sit near it, and she’d sometimes talk to us. Once she started talking to us more and more, she saw how we were happy to be there with her.

“She even asked to take a picture with us before we left,” he adds.

Connecting to these residents helps �԰����� students learn about the pride that San Antonians take in their homes, neighborhoods and communities, Toler says.

“This trip is about service, but it’s also about understanding that people—even if they have a home in need of repairs, or they have to walk to their local Walgreens just to use the sink—they have a pride of their own,” Toler explains. “Everybody is their own, independent person.”

For first-year Plunge participant Dani Moses ’21, setting out on the service trip was a way to find her own independence.

“The �԰����� Campus can feel so sheltering—and that’s a good thing—but for me, taking the Plunge means literally plunging into the community,” Moses says. “And that doesn’t just mean plunging into the pleasant parts of town.”

Moses’ group replaced drywall, flooring and cabinetry for a local grandmother who was missing segments of walls, ceilings and floors.

“This lady had lived in her neighborhood for a long time, she loved to ask about our experiences as �԰����� students, and she would even tell us about her grandkids,” Moses recalls. “She was so sweet, funny, and cute.”

That made it hard for Moses to hear that this grandmother had to fight off rats and other pests that tried to enter her house through the warped floorboards and missing wall segments every night.

“You really understand how important this type of work is,” Moses says. “These people, they can’t wait any longer—and we can help them right now.”

In addition to building these relationships between students and residents, the program also serves as a way for students of all faith backgrounds to come together in fellowship. Local religious center Blueprint Ministries organizes the workload, helping match �԰�����’s teams with residents who need help with their homes.

“We’ve got Christians of all denominations, non-affiliated people, you name it, coming together during the Plunge,” Toler says. “This is a humbling experience, but it really shows you that the �԰����� campus is a great place for faith-based communities, too.”

As future waves of Tigers—from first-years like Moses to sophomores and juniors like Toler and Ellard—decide whether to take the Plunge, Ellard notes that the off-campus service event echoes what happens to students at �԰����� during their four years there.

“We spend so much time together learning about each other, laughing, and serving that by the end of the trip everyone is pretty close,” Ellard says. “Everyone might begin by taking the Plunge as strangers, but we leave as a family.”