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Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published July 14, 2006

Bloomfield Hills — Whether a few hours’ drive away or across the hemisphere, planting flowers or giving young children some of the only medical care they’ll ever receive, Catholics of all ages are taking trips to minister to others.

Although adults aren’t bound to a school-year schedule, summertime is prime youth group mission trip season – and many youths are giving up a week or more of their vacation to help others.

Youth volunteer Lauren Langan, left, a member of St. Owen Parish in Bloomfield Hills who will be a sophomore at Groves High School in the fall, and another volunteer paint the side of a house as part of their mission trip to West Virginia.

In fact, mission work is an important part of being Catholic: In Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical letter “Deus Caritas Est” (“God is Love”), he discusses how “the exercise of charity became established as one of (the Church’s) essential activities” (22). The Church uses the parable of the Good Samaritan as an example of how Christian charity is a response to human needs (31). “The Church’s charitable organizations … ought to do everything in their power to provide the resources and above all the personnel needed for this work.”

Thirty members of the youth group at St. Owen Parish in Bloomfield Hills, and nine adults, spent a week in June in Peterstown, W.Va., and surrounding areas. Students built decks and wheelchair ramps, painted, sealed roofs or washed trailers.

That region is poor, and has little. Some residents had no running water, some could neither read nor write. Most were senior citizens who were happy to have young people around for a week.

“It was a great time,” said youth volunteer Kevin Fullenkamp, 15, who will be a sophomore at Andover High School this fall. “You met new people, you grew in your faith.”

The youths agreed that the trip also gave them a chance to get closer to other members of their own youth group; at St. Owen, youths represent 11 different schools.

Youth volunteer Kevin Fellunkamp, right, a member of St. Owen Parish in Bloomfield Hills who will be a sophomore at Andover High School in the fall, and another volunteer work on landscaping for a resident of West Virginia.

Volunteer John Taravella, 18, who will be starting at Xavier University in Cincinnati in the fall, said the trip gives volunteers the chance to get out into the world and see life from a different perspective. “God calls us to serve everyone, especially the less fortunate,” he said.

Volunteer Dan Devine, 16, who’ll be a senior at University of Detroit High School in the fall, said within a few days of returning from the trip, he already wanted to go back. “It’s hard to describe,” he said. “It’s one of the most profound feelings of the Holy Spirit ever. He’s like dancing around the whole time.”

“You were physically exhausted, but spiritually fulfilled,” added Taravella.

Four youths and three adults from St. Lawrence Parish in Utica went to Taylorsville, N.C., for a week in June to help build homes, visit nursing homes, paint, plant gardens and teach an afternoon Vacation Bible School.

“It was an amazing experience,” said St. Lawrence coordinator of youth ministry Marilyn Trumper-Samra. “It took you way outside your comfort zones.”

Youths had the chance to bond with their residents on this trip, some learning how caulk, paint, stain, as well as listen, follow directions and be proud of a job well done. One couple, married for 33 years, were also an example to the students of how a marriage can last for 33 years, how to persevere, and how to stick together, Trumper-Samra said.

She was pleased with the trip, but is considering making next year’s trip a parish event instead of a youth event. “I think adults need opportunities to live and serve out their faith, too,” she said.

Youths take a few moments for prayer during a recent mission trip to West Virginia, where they built decks, washed trailers and did other general repair.

“If you don’t get a chance to live out your faith, you don’t get to be Christ to somebody and they don’t get to be Christ to you,” she said.

The Haiti Mission Team, consisting of St. Blase Parish, Sterling Heights; Corpus Christi Parish, Detroit (the recently merged parishes of St. Gerard and Immaculate Heart of Mary); Our Lady of Victory Parish, Northville; as well as a handful of churches of other denominations, has been visiting Mirebalais, Haiti, about 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince, for the past few years to provide construction and medical assistance.

John Messina, a member of St. Blase who has been to Haiti seven times, said some of the improvements the group has made includes building an orphanage and a school addition. The 100-child-capacity orphanage is named after the St. Blase Parish in Sterling Heights, and the mission team recently donated a statue of the saint at the request of the church.

The group also offers medical treatment, Messina said, such as fluoride treatments, vitamins and immunizations. They’re not limited to helping one denomination; for example, one year they put an addition on an Episcopalian school. This year they brought computers and educational equipment.

John D’Antoni of Anchor Bay, who volunteered with the St. Blase group of the Haiti Mission Team, fills teeth molds with a fluoride treatment, which are given out as part of the medical treatment of the mission trip.

By the mission team’s statistics, 40 percent of Haitians never see a doctor. Only about 20 percent attend school, and 60 percent of people age 15 or older are illiterate. There’s not much economy, no stable government, and people live without running water and sewers, and with sporadic power.

The efforts allowed Mirebalais to open its full-time St. Pierre Clinic last year, which costs about $2,400 a month to operate. The orphanage costs about the same.

On the last trip, there were already hundreds of people in line down the block an hour before the clinic opened. “We have to teach them how to brush their teeth,” Messina said of the children. “They’ve never seen a toothbrush.”

Messina said volunteers see the poverty there but are also encouraged at how visiting brings the people there hope. “I go because I think it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “We’re given so much here. People of other countries are not as fortunate.”

Bishop John C. McNabb, OSA, spent 36 years as a missionary to the poor in Chulucanas, Peru. Now 80, he’s the pastor of St. Clare of Montefalco, Grosse Pointe Park.

The Church, by nature, should be doing missionary work, he said. And all of us, not just religious, have to be mindful that we’re being sent with a mission.

Bishop McNabb also said it’s great that youths are involved in mission trips, so they can “see what the rest of the world looks like.”

“In a third-world country, people celebrate life,” he said.

Even young students at St. Clare of Montefalco collect things for the poor, he said, which teaches them right from the beginning they have to minister to others. But when we do minister to someone, “it’s not what we do for them, it’s what they do for us,” he said.