Six years ago one of my kids (then age 12) went on an all-youth mission trip with Strawbridge United Methodist Church. She spent the week cleaning debris out of yards and repairing and painting houses. It changed her life.
It’s not that any of the clean up work generalized to her personal life, because the floor of her bedroom remains covered in debris and her bathroom is an ecological disaster area. What changed was her understanding of what it means to be a Christian, and how Christianity is inseparable from a life of service.
A few years ago I decided to tag along as an adult leader, although I’m abviously using the term “adult” loosely. This year we took 232 people (mostly 12-18) to Gonzales, Texas for a week of building and fixing and painting. The kids are split up into teams and lots of great mentoring goes on between the older kids and the younger kids. This year my group replaced rotted wood and siding, built a porch, and painted for a woman who worked as a janitor and was raising her four year old grandson. Her daughter (the boy’s mom) had been killed in an automobile accident two years ago. We fell in love with the rediculously cute four year old and his wonderful grandma, and I think the feeling was mutual.
It was a week of miracles. Let’s call them miracles of comission and miracles of omission, because sometimes miracles occur in what doesn’t happen. It’s simply unreasonable to have nearly 200 adolescents using power tools (some of these kids are maybe a whopping 70 pounds) and return them to their parents intact. Blisters and splinters, sure, but no spurting wounds or loss of digits. Actually, in the last few years that I have been doing this we have had two significant injuries, and both occured during play time. The first happened while we were jumping off a cliff into a river. A young lady for whom co-ordination was obviously a struggle was about to jump, and I was excited about her growing confidence in her physical abilities. My adult supervision consisted of saying “Good for you! Make sure and jump out far enough like everyone else did!”
Yeah, didn’t happen. Splat. Broken ankle.
Last year’s major injury was the result of a game of Human Jenga. The high school guys stack air mattresses to the ceiling, a guy gets on top, and the others take turns running into the stack and knocking out the mattresses one by one. Get it? Human Jenga. Anyway, the guy on top usually goes flying and lands on the mattresses on the floor. My ability to engage in any sort of adult supervision is still suspect, as I was standing there laughing hysterically as our Human Jenga victim his the floor with his head and required multiple stiches.
Thus endeth Human Jenga.
If you want to watch some great videos of us working (ahem) check out Strawbridge Youth on Youtube. Their energy is contagious, and our high powered worship was great. This is a church full of wonderful people with wonderful gifts. This same church struggles with worship attendance every Sunday. Hello? Is anybody out there in the Methodism paying attention?
One of the classes that I took at seminary was titled “Evil, Suffering, and Death.” I took it because, hey, who could resist a title like that? Anyway, I thought most of the class was total crap because I concluded long ago that we just don’t get to know why horrible stuff happens. The only thing that made sense to me in that class is when the Professor said “Testify to love, and insist on hope.” When people ask me questions about why God allows awful things to happen, the most legitimate answer that I can give is simply “I don’t know.” I can say that I believe that God works in the midst of all situations for good. I know that God takes the very worst stuff and uses it to change lives.
My favorite part of every Strawbridge mission trip is the Bunny Stories and the man who tells them. He always stays with the 6th grade boys at night, which is probably our toughest gig. His name is Sam. Sam tragically lost his 15 year old daughter this year. She went on mission trip every year, and her absence was palpable. Sam told his bunny stories and he loved on the kids and comforted them and he was fun and funny like always. He is a living example of the very best part of Christian life; our ability to see the light of Christ shining though the darkness. He helped change lives by testifying to love, and insisting on hope.
May we all learn to do the same.
