Each Classic Plumbing Plumber of the Month winner receives over $100 in prizes from the following sponsors: David Wickboldt at Legal Shield, Tim Culver at Classic Plumbing, Scott Miller at Bulldog Automotive, Felipe and Carmen Rebollo at Los Zarapes and Dani Tietz at the Mahomet Daily.
For Mahomet-Seymour Freshman Joseph Scheele, doing “your part” takes on many different forms.
This summer, he learned about more ways to do “your part.”
An avid runner, who saw success at the junior high level, Scheele kicked off his summer by joining the nationally recognized Mahomet-Seymour boys cross country team.
At that time, he moved from a mentor to one of the youngest members of the team, who had to do his part to make sure the team continues to improve.
“To be a good teammate, you have to work hard, do your part and encourage other people,” Scheele said.
He also added that in cross country, runners work to beat their teammates, which, in turn, pushes the whole pack to challenge each other.
Scheele began the summer running 5 miles. With the team goal to run at least .1 mile more each day, Scheele is approaching 10 miles a day.
“Sometimes it can get really tough, but you have your friends there with you to talk,” he said. “It’s quite a bit of fun to run with other people.
“It’s just time where you’re all doing the same thing. You all have at least one thing in common, and you can use that as group conversation starter to get to know people better.”
He’s also taken his time running to run alongside his former teammates who are preparing for their eighth-grade year.
Finding time to run was a struggle, but something Scheele found time to do, while he gathered with his fellow peers from the Lutheran Church of Mahomet and about 30,000 other Evangelical Lutherans for a mass gathering in Houston at the end of June.
During a week of worship and fellowship, students were also divided up to do project throughout the Houston area.
Scheele hoped he would be part of a community project, but instead, he was selected to learn about human trafficking.
“That is when people are sold as slaves,” he said. “We want to raise awareness for that so that we can prevent other people from being sold as slaves.”
Worldwide there are approximately 20 to 30 million people who are sold to work and sex slaves throughout the world. In the United States, about 400,000 people are brought into slavery each year, and nearly 80-percent of those people are children.
Part of Scheele’s work was to educate other community members about human trafficking by pouring red sand in the cracks on the road.
“The red sand symbolizes the people who fall through the cracks of society and into human trafficking.”
He, alongside other group members, also memorized 1-(888) 373-7888, which is the human trafficking hotline number.
“It’s a really big problem,” he said. “There are so many people that have been trafficked, and people need to know.”
Scheele also used this time to get to know his local peers who were traveling with him better through playing games and sharing stories.
“It was a lot of fun to get to know everybody, and learn about each other more.”
His work continued when he returned to Mahomet. Just last week Scheele joined his church in providing lunches in the Candlewood clubhouse.
Each summer, local churches choose one week to serve lunch to Candlewood residents on Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“I have a lot of fun doing that because it’s fun to help out the community and talk to people,” he said.
He is also looking forward to ending his summer weeks by volunteering at the Lutheran Church of Mahomet’s Vacation Bible School, which runs from July 29 to August 1.
Each year, he plays characters in skits with the young children.
While Scheele will be busy with school work and his extracurricular activities the next four years, he hopes to continue to do his part.
“I’d just like to get to know people more and become a bigger part in the community.”
