YOUTH MINISTRY – NEW Trekkers TRIP

March 22, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: News, Youth Group 

This summer we will be starting a new trip for our youth to West Virginia. The trip comes highly recommended by Sean Bray and other campus ministers from Seattle University who have been part of this program for a few years.

We will get to be part of a Catholic Worker project run by Jeannie Kirkhope for 7 days. This trip is important to us and a good fit for our Sacred Heart mission program because it is based on transformation, humility, and service like the other trips we’ve done. By that, I mean that it is a program of service, but it is based in education, prayer, and faith formation. A lot of service trips give people big “pats on the back” for being such good people and help build college entrance resumes.

The programs we have been a part of, and I feel this is going to be a really similar experience, have focused on the fact that in serving, we are in fact the ones receiving the gift. We are able to walk away with as much benefit and transformation as the people we are supposed to be serving.

What makes this trip unique:

  1. Professes the ideas of the Catholic Worker Movement as founded by Dorothy Day

    • will help the kids to see how modern Catholics are living in community and putting their faith into practice.
  2. Service based in America

    • West Virginia is the poorest state per capita in the U.S. We will get to look at how America’s poorest live first hand. And we will see immediate benefit to people with small farm projects.
  3. Environmental Education/Permaculture

    • West Virginia has the most mineral resources per capita in the contiguous United States; we will learn how mountain removal and strip mining affects the environment and how big businesses are protected by laws made in the 1800’s.
    • we will learn Catholic ideas about working with the environment and life styles that meet the needs of justice, faith, and factories we will learn about permaculture and making decisions that support local economies, local farms, and about how our lifestyles impact waste production and energy production and how those elements affect the environment.
  4. Faith Formation

    • this program is founded on Ignacian principles of Faith and reflection, there will be nightly reflections to help us deepen our faith and prayer lives, and to help the lessons we learn “fall into rich soil,” so that they will last and bear many fruits [each of the other programs we do has reflections at the end of every day.
    • we will learn about service, poverty, environmental justice, and stewardship all from Catholic perspectives and theology

    Thank you for your continued support of me and of our youth and our programs here at Sacred Heart.

    Michael Murphy, Youth Minister

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