December 22, 2004 SELINSGROVE, (Pa.) – Students, faculty and staff from Susquehanna University, along with a teacher from Milton Area Senior High School, will start out the New Year helping the needy in Nicaragua and Costa Rica through the Susquehanna University Central America Service Adventure (SU CASA). The volunteers, numbering 28 in all, surpass last year’s group to become the largest SU CASA group to travel to Central America for the annual service-learning trip, which will take place from Jan. 1-15, 2005. The group will spend one week in each Central American country, working on one of four different service teams. The teams, which include residents of the refugee and immigrant communities they visit, will undertake construction projects, teach vacation bible schools, work with orphaned children and serve the sick in medical clinics. In Costa Rica, the groups will work at mission sites in San Sebastian, Pavas and Proyecto Cristal. The sites include churches, medical clinics and vacation bible schools. The teams will also treat children from Iglesia Luterana Sola Fe (Faith Alone Lutheran Church) and Iglesia Bautista La Trinidad to an outing at an amusement park. In Nicaragua, the groups will team up with locals to undertake projects at the Centro Infantil Cristiano Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Christian Orphanage) in Isla Ometepe, a volcanic island in Lake Nicaragua. Team members will also help construct a church in the village of Los Angeles, and work in medical clinics in Los Angeles, Balgüe and Esquipulas. SU CASA team members consist of 21 students from a variety of academic majors, along with the Rev. Mark Wm. Radecke, university chaplain; his wife, Tami, director of development and community relations for Evangelical Community Hospital, Lewisburg (Pa.); April Borry-Black, administrative director of the Susquehanna University Health Center; newly retired history professor Don Housley; his wife, Grace, and James Boose, a shop teacher at Milton Area Senior High School. More than half of the student team members are making the trip as part of Radecke’s two-credit course “Images of Jesus in Central America.” Through the service-learning experience, the class examines the ways in which Jesus is depicted in the art, iconography, architecture, worship, hymns, theology, preaching and imagination of four Christian traditions in Central America – Roman Catholic, Evangelical/Mainline Protestant, Pentecostal/Neo-Pentecostal and advocates of liberation theology/theology of life. Since SU CASA’s inception in 1999, seven teams totaling more than 115 members of the Susquehanna University community have spent two weeks each year living, working, worshipping, playing and praying with members of Central American communities. They have delivered a combined total of more than $140,000 in materials and cash gifts and have contributed more than 5,000 hours of volunteer service. Contact: Victoria Kidd 570-372-4119 #vk/1858#