“Eye opening”
“Life changing experience”
“One of the most impressionable things I have ever done”
“One of the best weekends of my life.”
These are some of the comments that I received on the bus ride home from the Mission Trip when I asked each teen to describe this years trip in a word or a phrase. Reflecting on the trip, I thought back to some of the worksites we visited - Mederios Center, a day shelter for the homeless; Friday Café in Cambridge, where the housed and the unhoused share a meal for the afternoon; the Childrens Clothing Exchnage; Boston Common sandwich ministry; and Pilgrim Church soup kitchen ministry, to name a few. I also thought back on the last seven years of trips and all the similar places of outreach where our teens have served a meal, painted a room, shared a conversation with the homeless or the needy.
What struck me, however, is that the most important thing is not how many places we have visited, how many people we have served, or how many years we have been on the trip. The impact of a mission trip that is lasting within each of the participants starts with the experience of genuine human encounters. This is the ministry of presence. And out of this can come individual awakening, eye opening moments, or conversion experiences.
Leaving our phones at home and leaving all technology behind, we remove many of the distractions of our daily life and open ourselves to new interactions. We are not going to get rid of homelessness or cure mental illness, or solve the problems of poverty. The mystery of the experience is that by immersion into the individual lives of real people, having a conversation,
listening to story, looking into their eyes, learning someone’s name, not only can provide a moment of comfort to them, but by participating in small acts of mercy, we, the givers, or the servers, may find that we have awakened something in ourselves.
We can find ourselves in a conversation with someone who may have lived a life very much like our own until overcome by a tragic circumstance. In a moment like that we can have realizations that “there but for the grace of God go I.” And, as I have often said to the teens, “Once you see, you cannot not see.”
Our team, youth and adults have experienced first hand one aspect of the mystical body of Christ. In their words:
“We are all the same”
“God is everywhere, you just have to open your eyes and look.”
“God is a vine that connects us all.’
“Everyone has a story.”
The ongoing challenge is for each individual to reflect on the mystery of his or her own personal
experience of this trip. Reflect, and in silence, let it speak.
“Humbling”
“Blessed”
“Inspiring”
“A Must Have experience”
“Enlightening”
“Sometimes you don’t know something is remarkable until it is over.”
Thank you to the St Catherine of Siena Community for your prayerful and financial support of Mission Trip 201/ Judy Pluta, Director of Youth Ministry.