Chance Gardner, 20, and Taylor Regis, 20, are missionaries from Utah helping Thrive Allen County with a number of community service projects.
Regis is from Layton, Utah and Gardner is from Midway, Utah. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the men’s mission is to teach the gospel while completing acts of community service throughout various communities. The church has missionaries all over the world, according to Regis, and they serve wherever they are placed. It is a voluntary experience but once they have made the choice to serve, men must complete a two-year service and women 18 months. Each person who chooses to serve contributes a flat-rate dollar amount. The church then provides all of the missionaries’ living expenses.
“The reason they do that is that someone serving in South America versus someone serving in England is going to have extremely different expenses,” Regis said.“This way they can just flat-rate it across the board and redistribute it to everybody.”
Whether the missionaries transfer to another town is decided by a mission president every six weeks. It is up to the missionaries to find their own opportunities for community service. After serving in the Kansas City area since June 2015, Regis arrived in Chanute in February, where Gardner had been since December.
“There just wasn’t a lot of service opportunities that I saw,” Regis said of Chanute. So the young men contacted Thrive Allen County to see if there was anything that they could do.
“They have such great attitudes and we are fortunate that they wandered into Thrive’s office,” said Program Director Damaris Kunkler. “They did not have to be supervised, and to be able to have that kind of trust in your volunteers is very much appreciated.”
First they did some work for Humanity House and then they started painting 54 Fitness.
“The elders were instrumental in keeping the grand opening of 54 Fitness on track,” Kunkler said. “Each week they have donated time to help finish painting, put up the vinyl, and did the clean-up of the building for the ribbon cutting. Because of the time they were able to give, the fine detail work was able to get accomplished.”
Now that renovations at the Moran fitness center are complete, the young men are working on projects around area biking trails and in LaHarpe.
Regis said Allen County was his favorite place that he has served over the past two years. He said it’s the closeness of the people that he appreciates. Although mission work runs in his family, as an unhappy teenager he was not initially headed in that direction. He said as he drew closer to the teachings of the church, his direction changed, and he became more content. He decided he wanted to share that peace of mind with others.
“I came straight to Kansas and Missouri after high school,” he said.
Regis’s mission trip is almost over and afterward he intends to go back to Utah, get a job and prepare to go to college. He hopes to get a degree in business.
“I am just really grateful that I had this experience,” he said. “It’s been incredible and definitely opened up my view of the world.”
Gardner graduated from Ogden–Weber Applied Technology College in 2016 with a certificate in auto mechanics. He delivered pizzas through college and in order to fund the mission trip. He hopes to get a chance to serve in Western Missouri during his two-year-mission. It has been beneficial to experience Midwestern culture, he said. When he goes back to Utah he intends to pursue a career in ATV repair.
Missionaries tackle area projects
