Mary Emery has gone to Africa and Brazil on mission trips.

This week, she's on the receiving end of one at her home in Duncansville.

Volunteers from the state of Indiana are fixing her entrance ramp, rebuilding her shed, repairing her deck, sealing her driveway, repairing her roof, painting rooms and caulking windows.

Seventeen members of Centenary United Methodist Church in Evansville are among about 100 people - mostly from United Methodist churches in the region - working on 18 projects coordinated by Second Avenue United Methodist Church.

It's the annual "Altoona Mission Week" for Second Avenue, which began four years ago with a handful of its own members working in the immediate neighborhood.

As workers stained her ramp and worked over sawhorses in the yard, Emery recalled being disconcerted when members of a club who belong to the Second Avenue congregation encouraged her to fill out an application for help.

She hesitated.

But then she remembered her pastor's teachings about charity: "'Be quiet and say thank you,'" he said. "'Let them take care of you.'"

Coming 560 miles has helped the members of the Centenary congregation leave behind their normal routines and distractions, so they can get to know one another better, enrich their lives and "focus on what God wants us to do," said the Rev. Danny Walker, a former Duke University Divinity School roommate of Second Avenue's pastor Matthew Lake.

It's helped the Centenarians see that Evansville is not the center of the world and that it's all "one big church," Walker said.

One of them talked about "seeing God" in Emery, Walker said.

She bought paint, and she's been cooking.

"All you've got to do is feed them and they're happy," Emery said.

The food has made them happy enough they've been demanding her recipes, one of the men said.

Centenarian member Brian Fleming, 20, went on two previous mission trips in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"You might not do the best job," but people are filled with praise and gratitude, he said.

They're spreading the word of God with the work of their hands, said Jacob Ahlbrand, 16.

Charity work helps those who do it to "think not so much about themselves," said Lake, whose church has become a campground for air mattresses for the visitors.

It gives those who do it the opportunity "not just to talk about love" but to "experience it in a tangible way," he said.

It works both ways, he said.

"When people are willing to take the risk of helping change someone else's life, more frequently than not they find their own lives change," he said. "[It's] transformative."