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Youth Mission Caravan 2005
St Andrew Youth Group goes to Arizona
AWAKE, the St. Andrew Presbyterian Sr. High Youth Group traveled to Whiteriver Apache Indian Reservation for their annual summer mission trip. Twelve students and five adults spent a week painting houses and schools, cataloging books for the school library, and running a Vacation Bible School. The Whiteriver Reservation is Northeast of Phoenix and has a beautiful landscape full of plateaus and being over 5000' in elevation the temperature was only in the 90's.
AWAKE again teamed up with YouthWorks, a non-profit organization that specializes in Jr. and Sr. high missions trips. They emphasize relationship with the community and maintain a year round presence, in the case of Whiteriver, for over eight years. YouthWorks is not interested in "saving the world" in a week, but rather through steadfast service to the community spread the message of the Love of Jesus Christ. YouthWorks has over 80 sites in North America, which means 38,000 students will go on mission trips this summer alone.
It was not all hard work, the group was also treated to a cultural talk by an elder resident, a tour of Fort Apache, a walk through Indian ruins, and a community pot luck.
In this day and age, for the youth of this valley to give up their time, raise money for this project, work very demanding physical labor in very hot conditions says a lot. To sleep on the floor, meet and serve people very different from themselves and love every minute of it speaks volumes. It makes you proud to be a part of the whole experience.
Upon their return they conducted both services at the church telling the congregation about the week in song, a photo power point presentation, and their testimonies. It was a very moving Sunday.
If you would like to see what AWAKE is about please join them every Sunday evening from 5-7pm at St. Andrew. During the summer you can find the AWAKE kids at an informal Bible study held at 4pm in the Plaza by the Flag Statue on Tuesday evenings. All Sr. High students are welcome! |
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