Mission possible

Plug'd in For students, by students at Northern High School

Friday, Nov. 27, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted photo Caroline Colgan works with children on a mission trip in Arkansas, arranged by her church. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

The day seems like a surreal blur to Junior Elizabeth Huxell, who stares blankly through a clouded airplane window as her beloved Arkansas fades into the distance.

Face pressed against the cool glass, Huxell strains to see the remains of her most cherished summer memories: Two weeks of obsessive bracelet making, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, volleyball games, water fights, sing-a-longs, puppet shows, sweet hellos and sad goodbyes.

The work may have been brutal, but for Huxell the hardest thing was never knowing whether she'd see the people she's grown to love again. Slouching back into to the seat, closing her eyes she thinks back to her long week spent on a mission trip in Waldron, Ark.

Mission trips are a window of opportunity for students to help the less fortunate and to grow together religiously. Students work and serve as missionaries for different churches, traveling to states and countries around the globe and performing tasks like organizing and running vacation bible schools, participating in community outreach programs, landscaping for the disabled, cleaning and maintaining local churches, and even clearing roads in rainforests.

After Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans was left in ruins. A group of students from Saint Nicholas Lutheran Church traveled to the once majestic city to help restore and rebuild starting from the ground up.

Senior Tierney Guido said, "For me, the best experience was seeing thousands of people (37,000 volunteers showed up) work together for one cause. Every night we would gather at the Superdome to listen to motivational speakers talk about different causes and address how we could help them." Students participated in various projects. The main job was cleaning up the land and helping one specific neighborhood.

Students from Chesapeake Christian Church made a long voyage to the Dominican Republic this year to help build a Summer's Best Two Weeks camp for the people of the area. They did jobs like clearing the rainforest floor to make roads, playing with local orphans, making volleyball courts for the camp and generally working to put the camp together. Jobs required many hours of work under the scorching sun. The missionaries attended a local church where the sermon was completely in Spanish.

Junior Zach Nycum said the trip opened his eyes to how other cultures live.

"They don't always have air conditioning, clean water, hot showers, sanitized food, or even shelter," Nycum said. "It also brought me closer to those who went with me, and closer to Christ."

After a full week of work, the group traveled to a beach about an hour away where the water was crystal clear and they caught puffer fish and crabs with their hands and bottles. "The experience was unreal," Nycum said.

Local Catholic parish Jesus The Good Shepherd runs a yearly mission trip to Danville and Waldron, Ark. Students can choose to go one week or two.

Juniors Darcy Perdue and Kyle Sherbert participated in two weeks of the 2009 Arkansas trip and Sherbert said the experience was better because of that.

"I had the chance to spend an entire weekend with the priest of the Waldron church. I had the privilege of meeting and spending time with both the Danville and Waldron kids."

Every day the volunteers awoke at 7 a.m to travel to the church to clean, cook and plan for the long day ahead. The students were in charge of organizing crafts, skits and activities.

The youth group coordinator for Jesus The Good Shepherd Parish, Julie Gartrell, was the head chaperone and "go-to woman" on the trip, and she said this year was among the best.

"Our teen missionaries made enormous strides, mingling and co-working with the Danville and Waldron hispanic teens as one whole unit," Gartrell said. "Each teen demonstrated tremendous leadership skills and helped the program grow as a whole. I was so proud."

While on the mission trip, it was the students' responsibility to plan each day, to look out for the younger children, and to bond with the older ones.

"We'd play a variety of different games and activities with the children," said Junior Jimmy Fagan. "Four square, tag, tether ball, bubbles and chalk were among the most popular. There wasn't a minute that went by when one of the kids wasn't tugging on my leg to climb across the monkey bars, or to be picked up and spun around. To the kids, I felt like a big brother. When it came time to leave and all of the little kids were crying, it broke my heart."

Junior Caroline Colgan said, "During the week, you end up falling in love with all of the kids and all the people there and everything about it. Those are the people that bring you back down to earth. It's a huge reality check and it makes you realize what you have and to appreciate it."