Mission Trips

St. Paul’s Mission Trip 2019

God Is in Our Story

Logan, WV Youth Mission Trip 2019

“Storyline” is the theme for YouthWorks’ summer mission trips this year. They organize mission trips for youth at sites all around the country. Last week in Logan there were about 73 of us (58 teenagers and 15 adults) who gathered.

Our group of 19 met up with groups from congregations from the Twin Cities, Monroe, WI, the west side of Chicago, and Columbus, OH. Together, we met and worked with, and helped out people from in and around Logan, WV.

Here’s a bit of what all we did:

We painted, helped plan and began digging a staircase up the hill to a woman’s porch, visited with and sang for nursing home residents, moved rocks and cement and cleaned up a couple’s driveway, played with kids at a summer kid’s club, served food to community members at an evening cookout, bagged apples and oranges in the rain and then distributed them, along with other food, to people at a food bank at a place called Paradise Island, went on prayer walks around downtown Logan to pray for the people, businesses, and the community, moved furniture and an air conditioner and painted at a sober living shelter, and read to children and helped out at two literacy agencies.

We also had some fun: visiting a museum and hiking at Chief Logan State Park, bowling, going on a scavenger hunt, playing lots of Four Square and some basketball, and, always a favorite of the youth, staying up very late with friends on the last night.

In the framework around all of this we: did morning devotions and evening worship, we served one another by preparing meals and cleaning, we enacted Jesus’ command to serve one another through foot washing, and we prayed for one another.

And through all of this was the theme of “Storyline”. God runs through all of our stories, and the stories of all of those we meet. God is with us in the places we come from, God is already there in the places we go, and God is with us on the journeys in between.

Each of us has a storyline to our lives. Look into your life and you will see God moving. Look into the lives of your neighbors and you will see God moving. Look into the lives of our youth, and you will see that God is moving in their lives too.

Participating in mission trips and doing God’s work is an eye opening and growing experience for our young people.

St. Paul’s 2019 Youth Mission Trip Group.

We arrived at our first stop in Columbus, Ohio just in time to unpack the vans and help a group who was packing care bags for immigrants who were passing through.