The youth group from Centerville Presbyterian Church (CPC) is ready to embark on an epic journey! All of our applications are complete. All preparations have been made. All planning meetings are a thing of the past. Sparing no expense and spanning dozens of miles we are ready to brave minutes on the freeway to go on this year's mission trip!
In recent years this youth group from CPC has traveled for days over their spring break's from school to work on the physical grounds at a Navajo Mission in Arizona and, most recently, to do construction and destruction (on purpose) in Mexico and while assisting in a brand new church plant. This year, over our spring break, we are upping the ante a little and traveling about forty miles to stay in Oakland. From there we are going to go and work in San Francisco, Richmond, and anyplace else that could use some people to lend a hand.
We will be walking neighborhoods while delivering meals to home-bound people. We will go to a hospital to play games or maybe take some long-term residents on a field trip. We will work in an after-school program to tutor, teach, and play. We will walk the streets engaging with some homeless people to get their stories and, hopefully, fill a need or two. We will try to display the love of Jesus as we serve joyfully in places that are very close to home.
In preparing for this trip we have been told a little of what to expect, but I am counting on the unmistakable truth about going on mission trips like these...forget what you thought was going to happen. We will all be touched in one way or another and, according to people who have gone on all three of these trips in the past, the one close to home is their favorite by far. Having said that, the thing that most of the participants have said in preparing for this trip is, it is "out of our comfort zone." I have an idea about this. When we went to Arizona and Mexico, there were differences. There were different languages, different cultures, different physical characteristics, even different architecture and landscape. In Oakland and San Francisco we are going to see things that we have seen before, that we see every day, but hopefully through new eyes. I also think there is another reason for apprehension on the part of the participants. There is no ordinary sequence of events that could drive you down the path toward becoming part of those far-away cultures. You cannot just wake up one day and realize that you are Mexican or Navajo (unless you were adopted and your parents kept the secret for a really really long time.) The same cannot be said about being homeless.
I am looking forward to this trip. We all are. I am also one of the ones who says that I will be out of my comfort zone. I am looking forward to relating our experiences here on this blog and hope you will keep our group in your prayers as we are out and about this next week. We will be closer, this trip, than any other we go on but I think we will also be a lot farther away than any of us now realize.
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