Next week, area schools, colleges and universities will be taking a break.

While some of the students will be kicking back and taking it easy during spring break, others will be traveling farther afield doing mission work in other communities and foreign countries.

More than 120 University of Mary Hardin-Baylor students will be serving in missions.

Carly Meraviglia will be with a group traveling to Haiti with Hope for the Hungry to work in an orphanage.

The group will be painting a recently constructed facility at the boys’ orphanage and hanging out with the kids, Miss Meravigilia said.

The UMHB group, along with a teacher from Central Texas Christian School, will be there for five days.

“I spent a whole summer at the orphanage about two years ago, so I’m looking forward to see the kids I formed relationships with,” Miss Meravigilia said.

Natalie Gafford will be working with First Baptist Church of New Orleans for whatever needs to be done.

“They’re in a transition stage right now, so we may be helping them move,” Miss Gafford said.

Several UMHB students will travel to Juarez, Mexico, with Antioch Community Church of Belton. Others will travel to Plaquemines Parish in South Louisiana to do hurricane repair construction and serve children and women in poverty; work with children in inner-city Atlanta with First Baptist, Salado; go to Vidor to continue recovery efforts; and will serve in Victoria, Mexico, with Normangee Baptist Church. Also, a class from the school of business will be spending its spring break in Ecuador.

A number of UMHB students will be headed to South Padre Island to participate in Beach Reach.

This program, in its 28th year, is organized by the Baptist Student Ministry of West Texas A&M and includes groups from university campuses nationwide. UMHB will participate for the fifth year, joining more than 400 other BSM students to meet the practical and spiritual needs of the more than 80,000 college students converging on South Padre Island.

The students will be handing out sunscreen and bottled water, visiting with students on the beach who gather around special sand sculptures, providing rides in the middle of the night to get spring breakers safely to their destinations, offering free pancake breakfasts and cleaning the beaches each morning.

A little closer to home, Central Texas Christian School will have students in Arlington doing mission work through the Vista Community.

Three CTCS students will be in Mexico teaching vacation Bible school with Lifegate Christian Fellowship. Other students affiliated with Emmanuel Baptist in Temple will be part of a work crew at Highland Lake Baptist Camp.

Locally, a group of seminary students from Evangeline Booth College in Atlanta are in Temple helping with different Habitat for Humanity projects, including repairing a roof, said Capt. Martha Burchett, Salvation Army officer.

The seminary students have put on a pizza party for a school and are teaching at vacation Bible school, Capt. Burchett said.

jgibbs@temple-telegram.com