This Year's Youth Mission Trip to DC

Pilgrim Church Youth Group—Washington, D.C. Mission Trip 2009
Our Theme—Give Love

On August 2, eight adults and 35 teenagers boarded a bus for Washington D.C. Our purpose: To be honest, it’s hard to pin down.

You go on a mission trip because you think it’s going to be fun. The teenagers either have enjoyed previous adventures to places like West Virginia and Chicago, heard their brothers and sisters and friends tell stories about why they loved past trips, or they just want to get away from their parents for a week (and parents are happy to send them). It’s the same for the adults: They’ve heard the tales and want to taste what the kids talk about every year on Mission Trip Sunday, or like Sue Baust, for whom D.C. was her sixth trip in a row, or Dawn Gutro, who’s now done four, loving our teenagers and the people we help becomes a cherished week each year.

But why do we go? In the midst of modern life, where pace and profit often drive us more than love and peace, the reasons we initially go on the trip are never the reasons we’re glad we went.

God’s become a tricky thing in our age of too much information and open access to everything. God, which is love and experiences of grace, we think, is supposed to be consumable too. Hire the right staff, package the right mission experience, and presto: faithful teenagers.

God is so much bigger than we think; God, which is love and experiences of grace, is a mystery: Until you figure a little piece of it out.

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Mission trips are fundamentally about service. We live lives with so much, and it is a chance to introduce teenagers to giving of themselves. It is not natural to give: Our brains are hardwired to plan, to hoard, to make everything safe, and giving your energy and time is rarely a logical thing to do—at first.

We worked at the YMCA—hugging children who always need more love (it’s hard to learn and develop when you don’t feel like you matter). Their children and our children cry after only spending three days together.

We worked at Food and Friends and Bread for the City—feeding the hungry (it’s hard to pull yourself out of poverty when all your brain can think about is your next meal). One of our teenagers is already planning a trip back with his school.

We worked at the Salvation Army—Caring for neglected grounds (when you’re recovering from addiction, a well-tended garden can be the place you start over). A woman in a wheel chair came out after the work was done. She was only supposed to be outside for a few minutes. When they came to wheel her back in she said, “It’s never looked so beautiful. I need to stay out longer because I need to heal.”

We worked with Barney Neighborhood House—Repairing, cleaning, and transforming two homes of elderly residents (It’s hard to appreciate your life when it’s falling in on you). A quote from Mrs. Harris to her friend on the phone, “I can’t talk to you right now. I have too much help to deal with.”

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When 43 people live together for six days a lot of things go wrong, and you notice a lot of things going right. We saw love, which is God, happening.

God’s hand:
• The Hostel said they had a place for us to reflect each evening. We needed a quiet place with room for 43. They didn’t have it, but there just happened to be a church across the street, the first black congregation that opened in the mid 1800s because they were tired of sitting at the back of the white churches. Asbury United Methodist gave us their fellowship hall every evening.
• The woman Sarah planned with at the Salvation Army, a woman she’d talked to all year, left her job the week before we arrived so there was only one day of work for our team. Barney immediately plugged our team in, and could have used us for the next twenty years.
• Lots of people didn’t feel well. Every single one healed by the end of the trip.
• Our bus got in an accident. The stop sign was covered with a tree. No one was hurt, and we were only two blocks from our site: We walked, smiling at D.C. and making friends as we went.
• Two flat tires, but not until we arrived at our Youth Hostel, so it didn’t slow us down (Thanks to our brilliant bus driver staying up until 2 to get them fixed).
• Sun all week, and when it rained, it was while we were driving.
• It’s normal to be intimidated when you’re new to a group this size. Teenagers that were afraid, every single one, became leaders at some point during the trip in ways they didn’t ever realize.
• We had a great talent show planned. We needed a boom box. One of the kids ran out and got speakers to plug into their ipod, but no batteries. Mr. Davis, the caretaker at the church, found batteries for us with a smile on his face and the show went on.

All week, the show went on. Why do we worry so much when God’s always by our side, even when things aren’t going right?

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You figure out that God is with you when you make space to notice. The theme is as old as faith itself, and as our teenagers gave love to parts of the city tourists overlook, parts of the city we overlook when we’re tourists, we saw the God in the poor (and sometimes the person in poverty is us), the beauty (have you ever seen the reflecting pool shimmer the Washington monument on a cool summer evening?), and the relationships (Ask the kids about Mrs. Newport, Mrs. Harris, the dying woman who now has bright white rooms in which to spend her last days, the stranger they taught to play pool, the river guide who made them laugh, the chef who made them cookies, the person in their own youth group they wouldn’t have talked to before, but now call a friend).

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We went away to give love, and we come back ready to love more. We come back changed: More aware, more hopeful, and more connected.

What are you doing today to give love, which is God, to everyone you meet?