MARSHALL — While fellow Minnesotans are busy dealing with blustery winter conditions this week, six residents are among nearly 45 educators and Lifetouch employees from across North America who are assisting with the rebuilding process at a Puerto Rican school that was damaged by Hurricane Maria last year.

Balaton native Jan (Miller) Haeg is the director of the Lifetouch Memory Mission — the 16th since its inception in 2000 — and passionately looks forward to nurturing relationships, providing assistance and making memories.

“I love it and I’m excited,” Haeg said prior to the Jan. 21-28 trip. “I was in Puerto Rico in October and did the final preparation trip. I had a chance to visit the school and meet the principal. It’s a small Baptist school that we’re actually working in. I met a number of the staff and some of the kids. They’re are so excited for us to come down.”

The Colegio Bautista School in Puerto Rico consists of 120 students from kindergarten to ninth grade. The volunteers on the mission trip will work alongside construction workers to mix concrete and pour a floor intended to serve as a sports court. They will also be helping to construct a concrete wall to protect the school from neighboring communities.

“We’re just providing additional muscle,” Haeg said. “It’s all hard work. It’s bags of cement and putting it in a small mixer. And we’ll be doing lots of painting. We asked the volunteers to bring two or three good pairs of work gloves.”

Volunteers took a break from rebuilding work on Thursday to celebrate Picture Day — something Lifetouch is extremely well known for.

“We’ll take the photos, upload the images to our Chattanooga, Tennessee, lab on Thursday night and print the photos on Friday,” Haeg said. “Then the plant manager will load up his suitcases and fly down on Saturday. Then we’ll hand the photos out on Sunday.”

Haeg said the process of taking the individual and classroom portraits is one of the highlights of the trip — and is likely to be for the Puerto Rican students as well. There have been some difficulties in the process, but not for the past seven years during the mission trips to the Dominican Republic.

“It’s just a heartwarming thing,” Haeg said. “For some of the kids in the Dominican and in Haiti — more out in the rural areas — I’ve known kids who have never witnessed what they look like. They don’t have mirrors. So the idea of holding up a picture package and saying, ‘Who is this?’ is different because it’s all the other kids who say, ‘That’s her.’ Then for the girl to look at it and say, ‘That’s me?’ is an amazing experience to be part of.”

Haeg said planning for the 2019 Memory Mission trip started about a year ago. More than 1,200 Lifetouch employees and various positions and age levels of educators applied. The application process started in February and continued until September.

“Then we do random drawings,” she said. “This year, we have 15 Lifetouch employees and two from Shutterfly. Lifetouch was purchased by Shutterfly, so we’re now part of Shutterfly, but we still go by Lifetouch. The rest of the volunteers are educators, including superintendents, principals, teachers at the high school, middle school and elementary level. There are also school board members.”

This year marks the eighth that the mission trip has included the educators.

“They started coming with in 2011,” Haeg said. “For seven years, we built three schools in the Dominican. The trips we do are always geared toward kids, education and families. We’ve become clearer in our mission and our vision of the Memory Mission and the idea of really helping with education and families.”

Haeg said that since Puerto Rico is a U.S. Territory, there are building challenges because of permits, insurance and things of that nature.

“It’s a bit trickier to find a project in the U.S. where you can come alongside the locals and get your hands dirty and really work,” she said.

While the service work is significant, Haeg said developing relationships are just as important.

“The relationships are important if not more important than the actual work,” Haeg said. “When you leave, it’s the relationships you have been able to foster that matter the most. Then with that, the people really feel there is hope. It’s not just that some Americans came in and did something and they left. Our trips, I’d say, are radically different. It’s more about building relationships and respecting their world, their environment, so you and really see things through their lens.”

Haeg admits she’s had a “phenomenal career” at Lifetouch — a career than spans more than 30 years. She added that she is especially proud of the company for it’s mission trip efforts.

“The leaders in the year 2000 said it was the right thing to do based on Lifetouch as a company,” she said. “I’d encourage more companies to do it. The employees really rally around the mission and the vision, and they really value the idea that we’re giving back. It speaks to servant leadership that much more.”

While Haeg contributes a lot prior to the actual trip, she said part of her job on site is to make sure people are wearing sunscreen and drinking enough bottled water.

“We need to make sure we’re taking care of the volunteers, from a safety standpoint,” she said.

As with other trips, Haeg makes sure she travels from Eden Prairie to Marshall to visit her mom, Edna Miller, before she leaves with the other volunteers. The Boulder Estates resident said she worries about her daughter while she’s gone but looks forward to visiting about the trip afterward.

“It’s pretty nice,” Edna Miller said about her daughter’s commitment. “I like hearing the stories, though I’m sure I don’t hear about all of them.”

For others who might want to follow along during the week or see what the mission trip was all about are encouraged to watch the Facebook Live postings.