OCEANSIDE -- Looking every bit like a scene from a home improvement TV show, 37 visiting Texas teenagers ripped, tore, sawed and scraped a south Oceanside house nearly to a shell during their church-sponsored, week-long Easter break ministry project.

The teens and nine chaperones from Georgetown Baptist Church near Austin, Texas, arrived in Oceanside on March 15. Early the next day, the group converged on the South Coast Highway home of Dan and Maria Ybarra, hoping to renovate the home during as part of a youth group outreach effort.

Once the ripping and tearing began, though, the teens found the home needed far more work than they had anticipated, and were forced to leave the final portion of the project to volunteer contractors in North County. The teens flew home early Saturday morning.

"It's a shame we won't be here to finish the job, but we're happy to have been able to come out here and at least get the bulk of the work done," said Brett Levy, the group's leader and the youth director at Georgetown Baptist.

"Once we started pulling up the flooring, we knew this was going to be a bigger project than anybody thought it would be," he said. "There was a lot of wood that needed to be replaced."

The Ybarra family has lived in the rented home since they moved from Chicago more than 14 years ago. Dan Ybarra says he found it a bit overwhelming to have an army of out-of-town volunteers renovate the property.

"This is just all so surreal -- I just can't get over what all they are doing to our house," he said. "They came all the way from Texas to help a family here that they don't know anything about, and then do all this work for free.

"We're very grateful for all they are doing for us," he said.

Chris Martinez, a pastor at Generation Church in Oceanside, helped organized the project as part of an ongoing neighborhood ministry effort.

"We've made the commitment to be an active part of our community and to reach out to those who need our assistance," said Martinez, who also works with the youth group at the Generation Church. "It's our way of sharing the love of Jesus to our community, and backing up our words of love with action."

Each of the teenagers was required to raise $800 to cover travel and expenses and to help fund supplies used in the project.

Many of the teens, part of a 300-member youth group of the Georgetown congregation, worked after-school and weekend jobs, knowing the project was going to involve long days and lots of labor with little time for fun.

"I did a lot of baby-sitting and a lot of window-washing since last summer," said 18-year-old Allyson Hill, who last year joined her youth group on an Easter break trip to Brazil for another of the church's missionary trips.

"We're doing exactly what Jesus would do -- we're helping people and showing his love while we work on this house," she said. "None of us expected to have any time for fun because that's not what this trip is about."

Levy said he heard criticism back home that a Texas-based church youth group should look closer to home for worthy projects.

"Jesus didn't stay in one place for too long; he was always traveling to areas that he thought could use his help," said Levi, as he watched his group paint the interior walls of the home. "Someone once told me … 'If you aim for your city, you'll miss the world. But if you aim for the world, you'll hit your city.' "