Spreading Unconditional Love: The Mission Trip to Mobile, Alabama
It was 6 a.m. on a chilly Thursday morning. 78 high schoolers and 12 advisors from New Canaan, Connecticut loaded onto three buses and headed out to LaGuardia Airport to begin their mission trip to Mobile, Alabama.
YG is a youth group associated with the Congregational Church of New Canaan and has youth group programs for kids in grades 2-12. YG is a high school youth group founded in 1994, traveling with as many as 175 high schoolers.
YG rebuilds houses in partnership with Raise the Roof foundation, a nonprofit that serves people of faith living below the poverty line.
Thomas Welch, 17, said he has been passionate about the YG programs since a young age having participated in Guppies, the youth group for third and fourth graders, then JYG, junior youth group and finally MSYG, middle school youth group.
“The trips are definitely my favorite part because you get to travel and see different parts of the country and get to help people out and meet all kinds of people,” Welch said.
The 78 Mission Fish, as this group is known, have been preparing since June to serve the Mobile community. They have attended YG every Sunday at the Congregational Church from 7:30 to 9 p.m., planning team bonding events and working on small service projects around their town.
Senior Mia Berg has been on two YG mission trips and is also an active member of her Catholic Church but the community in YG pulled her in right away.
Berg poses on the first rainy day on the worksite. Photo by Morgan Flagg.
“I got involved in YG because I was already involved with my church group Ameis, the Catholic church group, and my best friend did YG. She said it was a great time and great experience,” Berg said. “My favorite part, quite frankly, is the free time playing cards. I feel like in the new world we have a lot of technology and we never have time to sit down and play cards so that’s the best part.”
Seven teams of eight to 12 kids spread out throughout Mobile, building ramps, painting a school and reconstructing a third of a family’s house.
The YG trip is largely centered around the “senior leaders,” as it is their last trip as Mission Fish. They are given bracelets with the coordinates of the church on it and stand up and give advice to the rest of the program on the final night.
Final worship is a time for reflection and gratitude after nine days of work. Each group member is given a fish pendant to remind them of the values they learned on this trip and who they are at heart.
“For me, as cliché as it sounds, it’s been a family… The friends I make here will show me empathy rather than sympathy, and they’ll go through it with me,” Miller said. “My friends outside of YG sympathize with me, but they’re not going through it with me.”
YG creates bonds that continue to last and grow. They continually have Mission Fish return as alumni and advisers to give back to the the program that gave them so much. In today’s world of chaos and injustice, it’s important to appreciate the small acts that people are doing to unite our communities.
“I think a big part of it is perspective; You always gain it when you’re here,” Berg said. “You see these broken homes, and I always hear my parents complain, ‘Oh the yard is looking gross,’ but you don’t really know… Like these houses are absolutely broken.”
Coming from New Canaan, many of these students grew up familiar with privileged lifestyles, so traveling to places such as Mobile, Alabama allows them to grow more aware of the reality of poverty in our country and serve others that are desperately in need.
“The biggest thing I’ve learned from this trip is to live your life with a heart of forgiveness and a heart of love and know that people have their days and are grumpy but there’s something behind it,” Miller said. “You know that your true friends will always be with you no matter what you do, and if people continue to support others, the world will be a much brighter place.”
Team Aloha works on repairing a homeowner’s wall. Photo by Kelly Leather.