Diocese of Ohio Mission Trips

Kate Gillooly, Minister of Formation and Program, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, has been in South Africa teaching and preaching in various parishes in the Diocese of False Bay, as well as observing at Reading Camp, which is cosponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington and Holy Cross Monastery in Grahamstown, South Africa. Kate has been blogging regularly at http://www.sa-partnerships.blogspot.com/.

Kate will be joined by 8 teenagers and 3 adults for a 2 week pilgrimage the group will be making in the Diocese of False Bay. The teenagers and adults will regularly be blogging about the adventures and service work they will be participating in while they are there.

A group from St. Timothy’s Church in Perrysburg, recently returned from a mission trip in New Orleans. Their blog has been added to our blogroll on the right side of this page. Thank you to everyone that went on the trip for sharing your stories!

If you would like to continue reading about the journey and experience of the group from St. Paul’s, Medina, click on the link to the right under “Blogroll.” The group will be writing posts throughout their trip and including them on that page.

A special thank you to St. Paul’s for sharing your experience with us!

By Steve Rucinski. The day dawned bright and sunny, breakfast at 7:30 with orientation at 8:30. We received our work orders for the day, rule-one, take twice the water you think you will need.

Our first project was a yard cleanup project at a newly built home about 3 miles away from camp. We arrived and started working, the yard was not too bad but the front drainage ditch was full of everything. We loaded about 1.5 big dumpsters full of stuff. From tires to photos to a can of mini-weiners we cleaned it all up. One of the finds was a 4 year old Ohio license plate pictured.

We also had the opportunity to meet the owner of the home, she told us her story as well as the neighbors’ story in which a mother and son drowned. The water was 8 feet high and the son was trying to get a boat to the house to rescue his mother, unfortunately the waves would sweep him away whenever he got close. The end result was they both died.

Meeting the owner and some other experiences is really bringing home for all of us how important this work is to this community and the individuals who live here. There is so much work to be done I wish everyone could be here to help and feel the blessings we are.

Please say a prayer for Nathan Snitzer who had a dehydration problem today, he is fine but has to stay out of the sun for a couple of days. We had a reflection meeting tonight to reflect as a full group (140+ people) about the days events, share some thoughts and thank God for the opportunity to serve. Tomorrow we are doing the reflection skit with our Toledo teammates.

Time for bed, this is a quiet camp tonight, some tired campers. More tomorrow. Thanks for your prayers.

After 16 hours of driving over 2 days we arrived Sunday evening at about 6 pm.

The 10 hour first day drive was uneventful, except for me (Steve Rucinski) going a little crazy with 5 teens in the car. If we could bottle their energy we could elimate oil as fuel.

We went to the 8 am service at St. John’s (Decatur, Alabama) which had a lot of thee’s and thou’s in it, not like our normal service. We will post more church pictures as time allows. We then hit the road for the final 6 hour drive to Bay St. Louis, MS.

Thanks be to God that we arrived safe and sound, Mary and her vehicle crew only got waylayed shopping for about 90 minutes and put her last place for arrival at the camp.

We start today with breakfast at 7:30, orientation at 8:30 and work projects at 9:30. Most days we will start working at around 8:30. There are probably over 100 youth here sleeping in 4 seperate 40 person quonset huts in cot-sized bunk beds.

Keep us in your prayers that our work here is helpful to those in need and that our efforts are injury free. More later as I have had no coffee and breakfast is almost ready.

Six adults and 8 young adults will be leaving for “Mission on the Bay’ on our churches first ever mission Trip. We will be leaving at 7:00 AM Saturday June 7th for a 9 day adventure!

When the words “mission trip” come up in conversation most people think of traveling to disaster areas, such as New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or poverty-stricken Appalachia. Maybe they think about places out of the United States, like El Salvador where money and technology are scarce. The phrase mission trip rarely suggests work in your own backyard. Fortunately, for the city of Youngstown, Ohio, the people of St. John’s, led by the Rev. Jeremiah Williamson, noticed that there was a lot of work to be done in their city alone, and the Youngstown Initiative was born.

The Youngstown Initiative is a program where mission-minded groups can do accessible and affordable work in the Youngstown community. The projects can be custom-designed to fit a group’s availability numbers, and skills; the parish of St. John’s will search to find work in the Youngstown community that best fits the group’s desires.

Groups (no matter what size) stay at St. John’s for a small fee of about $30 a night which includes all of St. John’s facilities including their full-sized kitchen. For a $2 donation, showers at the YMCA of Youngstown are available. Another $2 allows guests to use the pool, basketball courts, weight rooms, and other facilities Also provided is a host from St. John’s who is on-call all the time for any reason.

Along with their mission projects, groups are encouraged to explore the Youngstown area during their stay. Williamson provides plenty of options for groups to choose from including ballgames, and concerts in the park. That isn’t the only “free” time that they have, though. Groups can organize their own devotions and group bonding time back at the church. Another option is a contemporary Eucharist or healing service on the last night of the trip, which the group can also help to design.

So far, two groups have participated in this call to help others. Church of Our Saviour, Akron, and St. Paul’s, Fremont, have worked with such organizations as Easter Seals and Habitat for Humanity to successfully create their projects. When asked to tell a little bit about the Initiative, the Rev. Daniel Orr of St. Paul’s, Fremont, responded that “I thought the idea of the initiative was brilliant. It is precisely the way we need to build the kingdom by becoming lighter on our feet and more responsive to the needs of our swath of Ohio.”

Upon their arrival, the St. Paul’s gang (6 kids and 2 adults) had a choice of 5 specific places where they could provide their services. After much deliberation, they chose Easter Seals as their mission. Two-by-two the kids went to specific classrooms to work with kids suffering from Autism and pre-school aged children, as well. Things such as helping with school work, going swimming, and a field trip to Pizza Hut were some of the activities for their particular three day mission trip. “The work [with the children] was very intensive, but the kids want to go back!” explained Orr.

After their 9 A.M.-3 P.M. work days, the kids just wanted to relax. Evenings were filled with swimming, volleyball, and exercising at the YMCA, high energy devotions led by the St. Paul’s youth themselves, and simply playing games in the church’s facilities.

The Youngstown Initiative provides a new way to give back to a community of people that need help It’s never too late to offer support to a place that needs it.

Welcome to Homer, Alaska - population 12,000. This is what thirteen participants from St. Matthew’s, Brecksville, were greeted with as they began their 12-day-long journey to a place where many never get to visit. As believed by the Diocese of Alaska Youth Commission, “the purpose of young people is to change the world…” and that is exactly what they plan to do!

The idea for the trip began when the Rev. Marcus Cunningham, now rector of St. Matthew’s, was in seminary. After a good friend moved to become the Missions Coordinator and part time rector for the Diocese of Alaska, he called his old friend, Fr. Marcus, to see if he would be interested in building a church for their Diocese. Right away, Cunningham was excited by the idea.

Upon arriving as rector of St. Matthew’s, he noticed the church had a great interest in mission work in El Salvador, the location of their sister parish. Although they were experiencing some challenges with the idea, they thought that the trip to Alaska would be a perfect “training” trip.

“It’s an interesting location far enough away without leaving the country, and it will give us an opportunity to build experience and trust with our congregation while working on a very do-able project” said Cunningham. Along side St. Matthew’s are people from other parishes in the diocese, Alabama, and Tennessee.

Working up to the trip, participants studied and memorized Bible passages with Cunningham: “These [were] both motivational and provided scriptural basis for enacting our mission for Christ in Alaska.” Participants and supporters also helped out in both spiritual and literal ways. The St. Matthew’s knitting group made hats and scarves for the volunteers, while the youth group held carwashes and other fundraisers to help with expenses. Prayer partners were also chosen to provide secret support for the participants as they start and end their journey.

While in Homer, the crew took on a huge task: to build a 28’ x 44’ basic church building in the very short amount of time that they are there, meaning their days were packed. From dawn to dusk the participants worked, prayed, and just simply enjoyed each others company.

Although the trip might be over, please continue to pray, for these volunteers and the people they served during this trip, that they will be able to carry these experiences and relationships on for the rest of their lives.

For more day-by-day blogs and pictures posted by the mission team, visit www.alaskamission.blogspot.com!