(Editor’s Note: The following article was submitted by South Santiago Lutheran Church.)

 “There were plenty of poisonous spiders, but the only one who had a problem with them was Pastor Thul,” a Becker High School student and South Santiago Lutheran Church Mission Trip Dallas member explained this past Sunday when most of the 21-member team reported back their experience to the congregation during worship. 

South Santiago Lutheran Church (SSLC) members aged 14 to 86 recently returned from a nine-day mission trip to Texas and the fruits of their work will be seen as Gloria Dei Lutheran Church of Richardson, Texas, begins the important process of re-growing after several years of interim pastors, the pandemic – and a cold snap and power outage that devasted the working-class neighborhood church in January. 

The predominantly teenage group painted hallways and rooms, cleaned the narthex carpet twice, relocated pretty much every piece of furniture in the church at least once, demolished a water damaged coffee bar and outdated playground equipment. A member of the group actually broke a sledgehammer while attempting to crack the concrete foundation. 

Pastor Tom Schwolert, who was called to the congregation early this year, said he was genuinely impressed by the group’s work ethic and touched by their care. Gloria Dei operates a cat rescue out of a couple of its back offices and several of the trip participants did their part in making sure the cats received an adequate amount of socialization training. 

High school students Aiden Radeke and Jordan Mateyka mentioned hauling literally dozens of loads of pea rock from the old playground to the landscape gardens around the facility and along the sidewalk, and to the permanent cross display on the lawn of the church. The pea rock replaced mulch that really doesn’t hold up well in the Texas sun. 

“Gloria Dei’s plan is to turn the old playground area into a dog-walking park,” Pastor Daryl Thul explained. “Playgrounds at inner-city churches are not really well used in many cases. It’s not like mom or dad can go in the church and leave the kids outside in many places these days. 

“A fenced-in dog area will certainly be used by the community,” he continued, “So we were able to repurpose the rock. And it was truly a lot of it that they moved.” 

With many of the shrubs and perennial flower gardens overgrown, the mission trip had to contend with a serious number of wasps, none of whom were happy to have their homes invaded and destroyed. Sixteen-year-old Jaci Heitkamp was stung three times and she made mention of this fact as she talked about what she learned: “It hurts.” 

The team also spent a day and a half working for a non-profit that provides care packages for families and children who are facing food insecurity. Some of the team members procured specialized boxes from various resources and others decorated special boxes that will be used at Thanksgiving. 

Several of the mission trip members spoke of where they saw God in action during the trip. These included in Pastor Tom’s sharing about his family’s loss; the Gloria Dei Secretary, Kathy, and how wonderful she was; the way the group worked through issues and even the sunrise on a hot Texas day. 

The younger participants are already looking at planning the summer 2022 mission trip. 

Some of the high school students are planning on continuing to embrace the community they’ve found and are organizing a student-led breakfast this fall, hosted and paid for by one of the chaperones: Bill Rogers. 

This is Rogers’ second mission trip and an obvious favorite of the younger crowd.