Mission Trip to Arms of Hope Medina
by Jerry Shawn, Impact Volunteer
12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:12-13
Serving others can be a very humbling experience for those serving and those being served. I could tell at the beginning of our mission trip to the Arms of Hope (AoH) Medina Campus that we were a little nervous about what we were going to do, and about who we were going to meet. We were also hoping that we would do our best for those we were about to serve. We knew while serving these families that we were also serving God.
For most of us this was our first time at AoH. When we arrived we unpacked our gear, our cell phones were collected so we wouldn’t be distracted, and then we met in the common room for an orientation about serving the families here and what to expect. We now felt somewhat more at ease, and before we called it a night Devin demonstrated what it means to serve others by having some of us wash each other’s feet.
The next day we heard testimonies from some of the women, which I think motivated us even more. After that we hit the ground running, ready to serve. Maintenance crews led our teens to different tasks around the campus all week, from pressure washing the church and housing facilities to cutting trees down, building a fence around a playground, serving dinner to the families, and what seemed to be the favorite, helping at the campus daycare which serves the working single mothers who live there.None of this was easy, some of us used equipment we had never used before, like a chainsaw and post hole shovel, and did things we’d never done before, like leveling and mixing concrete for the fence. Some days it was over 100 degrees but we still managed to serve others because we knew God and his son Jesus, who we were representing, were with us. And in the end I think we got more out of serving than those we served did.
