I just came back from the youth mission trip in Scranton, PA where the youth and adult leaders did a lot of manual labor – painting a garage, building a wheelchair ramp, digging post holes, mixing cement, staining a deck, and more.
It was a lot of work, but by the end of the week, I’m guessing most of our youth and adult leaders would agree – what made the week meaningful wasn’t only the work, but about the residents for whom we worked.
My group met Vince – also known as “Elvince” because he had been an Elvis impersonator for decades. Vince is nearly 90 years old, and loved to tell stories about impersonating Elvis to the youth – including a favorite one about the time he visited Graceland and a security guard mistook him for a resurrected Elvis! Vince needed some work around his house done – but he really didn’t want us to spend all our time working – he’d rather we hear his stories.
Another group had planned to add handicap-accessible grab bars and the like to a couple’s home. But a week before they arrived, the woman for whom the grab bars would have been helpful, had to move into a nursing home. So their project was scrapped. Instead, the youth spent the week talking to a heartbroken husband who visited his wife three times/day to help feed her. They brought him a prayer shawl – a gift which moved them all to tears.
A third group was part of a double-crew tasked with building a complicated wheelchair ramp. After a few days of designing and re-designing the ramp, not much was happening outdoors. But inside, a resident spent hours with a youth, talking about how when his son died years ago, he’d lost his faith in God. He said that watching the youth working at his home reminded him of what he had missed.
Sometimes God shows up in ways we don’t expect.
In Christ,
Pastor Jen