Recap - Levi Sy

Recap – Levi Sy

After five days in St. Paul, Minnesota we are finally heading back out west – and, thank goodness, heading out of the humidity. But before we get back - although you might have heard about a few of the service sites previously - I’m going to give my perspective on this week’s service. This week, my group, The Spuds, worked at two different organizations – Open Hands Ministries, a free service that offers home goods and a lunch, and Cerenity Care, a Catholic-run assisted living community – on alternating days. (Open Hands on Monday/Wednesday and Cerenity Care on Tuesday/Thursday.)

At Open Hands, we had a variety of tasks to complete: setting up the facilities (the dining/home goods area,) patrolling the home goods, and prepping and serving lunch, as well as some smaller tasks. With regards to background, the program, operating out of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, serves lunch and offers a small selection of home goods and clothing once a week for the entire year; when the summer rolls around (bringing with it the Youthworks staff and programming,) the program expands to twice a week. In coordination with this service, although no one from our group served with them, Open Hands operates a Kids Camp for the children of community members. The majority of the program is run by four permanent staff members – an incredibly small number of people when considering the amount of beneficial work that is completed. More specifically, when we were there, on Monday we assisted in setting up and monitoring the facility, while on Wednesday we prepared and served the meal of the day – turkey noodle salad. All-in-all this site was one of the most direct, down-to-earth, efficient sites that I’ve been to!

Cerenity Care, as I said before, is a Catholic-run (Catholic Services for the Elderly/Marian of St. Paul) elder-care facility; the facility contains a medical center (formerly Mounds Park Hospital), an assisted living facility, and an independent living facility. While there, we served, once again, in several capacities. We started our service there (on Tuesday) by disinfecting multiuse tables, organizing the facilities DVD collection (which was quite expansive), as well as organizing the craft center. After this we met and interacted with some of the residents, ending our day similarly, but in more specialized activities. (Nail painting/men’s club). On Thursday, the Spuds began by assisting a few residents in repotting the facility’s overgrown potted plants and later moved to, after some more interaction, assisting residents in playing BINGO – One of my favorite (and our last) moments of the trip.

Overall, out of all the service that I’ve done over the course of five mission trips, I found that the service we performed this week was among some of the most valuable experiences that I’ve had. (I say that ever year, but this time I mean it! I think…) Open Hands Ministries gave the direct, uncontrolled contact with the community from a low-income neighborhood in St. Paul; I found that this site opened up our eyes (even if we’ve seen it before) to the need present not only in this community, but nationally and globally. Contrasting this, Cerenity Care was a controlled environment that showed an ever-forgotten way of serving and sharing God’s love with others. Extrapolating a bit, I found a take-home lesson – no matter what the situation is, regardless of your – or their - circumstances, there is always a way to share God’s love with someone. All-in-all, I suppose it’s fitting that this lesson is what this mission trip (whose theme is heavily entangled in God’s love) was intended (by more Youthworks staff) to teach me.

(We’ll be back soon!)