Wonder Voyage 2010 Summer Blog

Our week in NOLA with the team from Heavenly Rest drew to a close with some real New Orleans culture.  We began with alligators and ended with Creole Cuisine.  In the middle we explored the colorful sights, sounds, and smells of the French Quarter.  As we gathered for our final discussion time, the students reflected upon the moments of the week that took their breaths away, and the moments they will remember and cherish like picture postcards.

This has been an amazing week with an amazing group of young people.  They displayed grace upon grace.  They worked with energy and excellence.  They treated one another with compassion and kindness.  They showed respect and love for their adult leaders.  They served the people of the city with open hearts and open minds.  They immersed themselves in the culture of this unique and special place.  They ‘got lost’ in all there is to see and do and experience in the city, and in the midst of all of it they ‘found’ that they are a true community, a tribe that can have an enormous positive impact on not just one another, but on the world at large.  May God continue to bless and keep them as they grow in wisdom and stature.

The Heavenly Rest team in New Orleans has worked with great intensity all week. They have hung siding, put up insulation, pulled down sheetrock, hauled dirt, put up sheetrock, organized an office, and moved furniture. All of this has been accomplished with joy and laughter in temperatures and humidity that have at times approached the unbearable.

On our final work day here, the team really came to understand how much their efforts here are appreciated when they met Ms Valentine. Her house in the upper 9th ward was flooded with over 4 feet of water, and her rebuilding efforts were hampered by unscrupulous contractors. Our team was able to bring a gigantic smile to her face by tackling the task of painting the interior of her home. While it isn’t always necessary to see the faces and hear the stories of those whom we serve in order to know we have done something important, it sure doesn’t hurt. When that appreciation is conveyed with huge hugs, it really sinks in.

As we enjoy a day of fun here on our last day in town, we will never forget that yesterday really was Valentines day.

My name is Devon and my sister Suzanna and I belong to the Youth Group at West End Collegiate Church in Manhattan. The youth at West End have always been concerned with the wellbeing of others and for the past two years that concern has manifested in annual volunteer trips to the Gulf Coast. Over the summer of 2010, however, the group made the decision to travel to Memphis, TN to offer assistance to a people suffering in abysmal poverty.

The journey that we embarked upon under the auspice of Wonder Voyage shocked, saddened, and ultimately, imbued me with a resolve to work further to create positive change in the lives of the people I had met and in that of people like them. An experience that affected me profoundly was a clothing distribution we led in the projects; an endevour spearheaded by a local minister. We brought a schoolbus full of used clothing and household goods into the middle of a neghborhood most of us would never find ourselves visiting under other circunstances. Seeing people compete for clothing and materials that were, unfortunately, predominantly dirty and worn out. Seeing children, such as the vivacious and endearing O’neill, run around in the dust and hungrily choose second-hand toys, a blessing that i would take for granted, reminded me to be grateful for the blessings I have in my own life. It haunts me to remember that O’neill, living in the richest country in the world, had on his feet a pair of filthy crocs shreaded almost behond recognition admist shards of glass and other debris. The image of his smiling face juxtaposed to his extreme poverty will be, from this point onwards, the impetus which compels me serve others just as Jesus did.

This is Suzanna for the next section. Our trip was filled with memorable moments, not all necessarily from the mission parts. for example, after a long day of work our group headed over to a bowling alley for some good fun. these games were especially great because our wonder voyage leaders mike and Shawn joined in (to cream or be creamed!) And not to brag or anything, but getting 124 as a final was truly the cherry on top of an exciting day!

Every church has a youth group which allow teens to go to places with other teens and do activities as a group. In NYC there is the youth group of West End Collegiate Church or (wecc) for short. There are about 10 of use in the group and for the past 3 years we have been to New Orleans, Mississippi, and now Memphis. Our youth group traveld to those places to share hope, lend a hand, learn new skills, and to share God’s love and light with those who were in need of it. The point of our youth group is to learn why God has put us on this earth, and what we are destined to do. Being in the youth group helps us answer those questions by teaching us how to show love to the ones we know and the ones we don’t know. It helps us answer those questions by showing us skills we posses that we never knew we had. Those skills we learn just show us more of who we are and how we can use them in later life.

We’ve done so much during the trip to Memphis but certain things we did made more of an impact on me then others. The one that really had the most positive inpact on me was a center for the mentally challenged. Our task was to set up multiple stations that contained different activites for those who were part of the center. The other part of our task was to interact and play with the people who were mentaly disabled. Seems easy right? Wrong. It was not easy but it was fun. Seeing people who had to live with disabilities that can not be cured is difficult to see. For the first time I am thinking about how their families are impacted because one of there family members has downs syndrome or autism. Think about how the one to have the diability might be in pain mentaly and physically. There is so much more that can have a tremendous impact on the famillies lives. Everytime I looked into the eyes of one of them I felt helpless. However, that’s just what I saw. The adults and teens who we worked with were happy, active, and full of life. They always seemed like they looked at the positive side of life and not the negative. They wore smiles like badges of honor. Before I went to the center I always thought I would not be able to connect with someone who has mental dissabilites. My presuppositions changed quickly. By the end of the day I was thinking to myself “What if we are not the ones who are whole well? What if in their eyes we were the ones who were challenged; that we were the ones who needed help not them?” Maybe I can continue to serve and learn more about the strong people who face challenges everyday of their lives. Why did God put me on earth? Because I can make a change. I have the skills, the time, the heart and the determination to make someones life a little more pleasant. And in turn I find joy.

As West End Collegiate Church arrived in Memphis Wonder Voyage secured both our first church from Manhattan (this was only by a few hours as our second church from Manhattan arrived in NOLA that same day) and the oldest church we have ever hosted. West End Collegiate started in New Amsterdam (before it was called New York) in 1628! How do you host a church that is 382 years old? The same as any other church: present them with opportunities to be the hands and feet of Christ, give them an insiders taste of the local culture and create encounters that allow God to transform hearts.

West End came full of zeal and passion. The last two summers they traveled to NOLA spending most of their time gutting homes for families allowing them to restart their lives post Katrina. As one of their leaders said, “We did one task for five days.” This year West End decided to turn their trips upside down.  It was time to do 5 things in 1 day.  I have to say, I did not know if they could pull it off. Boy was I wrong.

Day one:  (1) the team started early at St Mary’s Catholic Church where they learned the turmoil filled history of Memphis and the heroes that have appeared all through the history of this river town. They then served breakfast to the homeless.  (2) From there, the group went to two different housing projects to spend an hour in the heat passing out flyers announcing a clothes give-away later in the week.  (3) They then jetted over to Union Gospel Mission where they served a couple of hundred homeless with a delicious pizza lunch.  (4) After lunch they came to Martyr’s Park to hear the tale of the brave men and woman that lost their lives coming into Memphis when it was over taken with yellow Fever in 1879.  80% of the population had the disease. Mike, our voyage director, posed the question: why does God seem to lead his people into the plagues of society such as poverty, hunger, disease, etc… (5) the team ended the day hosting a fantastic dinner program for victims of the HIV virus called Food for Life. A Mexican feast was on the menu.

What  a day. 5 in 1 and they were still full of joy at bedtime. West Collegiate, I think this is going to be an incredible week for you.