Fourteen youth from Rejoice Lutheran Church in Clearwater participated in a YouthWorks mission trip to Taylorsville, NC to work with the community and build relationships.

 

Service has always been a big part of Rejoice’s youth, working with the local community and being involved in various mission trips. This was the second YouthWorks mission trip the church has participated in, and the first ever for seven of the students.

 

YouthWorks is a nonprofit organization based out of Minneapolis, whose goal is to connect teenagers to God, each other and communities. Each summer the organization provides life-changing mission trips for over 30,000 students and adult leaders in over 70 communities across North America.

 

Led by four adult leaders from Rejoice, the students were split into different work sites, which included Habitat for Humanity, vacation Bible school, meal delivery, cleaning community members’ homes and yards, and spending time at nursing homes building relationships. During the trip they teamed up with another church from Hendersonville, NC. 

 

Mickaela Maehren and Sarah Damhof were part of the senior high youth.

 

“The first two days we were there my group organized our own Kidstop,” Maehren said. “We invited kids from the community to a local park and had stations for things like bible reading, music and art. Taylorsville is a small community like Clearwater, and it was crazy, we got a lot of kids.”

 

The last two days her group worked with Habitat for Humanity building houses. 

 

“That was really cool, we got to use corded power tools and work on an actual house,” Maehren explained. “We put up two walls and stained three decks.”

 

Sarah Damhof was in another senior high group that helped local community members with work they needed done.

 

“We went to an elderly man’s house and raked and weeded his entire yard,” Damhof said. “We washed two of his cars and spent a lot of time just talking to him. Another day we helped clean and organize a thrift shop.”

 

Wednesday her group cleaned and helped sort and fold clothes at a crisis pregnancy center, and Thursday they went to a food shelf where they packaged 200 takeout containers with food in half an hour and loaded them onto a truck, which then drove around and gave them out to the needy.

 

Bethany Timm and her sisters Charity and Jessica were in one of the junior groups. 

 

“The first two days we worked at a farm that does animal therapy for disabled children,” said Bethany. “They had just moved so we unpacked stuff and I helped feed some of the animals.”

 

The third and fourth days the group worked at a kids club.

 

“At the end there was a big storm and we comforted the kids who were scared,” Bethany said. “We learned a lot about building relationships and at the end we were all one big family.”

 

“We’re really new to this church (her father, Steve Timm, is the new pastor), so at first I was pretty hesitant,” said Charity Timm. “But my sisters convinced me. I went out of my comfort zone a lot, that turned out to be a good thing.”

 

Each evening the two churches would get together, have a service and talk about what they had experienced. Charity ended up leading one of the services.

 

“Our youth did remarkable work serving alongside the community of Taylorsville, acting out of love and selflessness to meet the needs of the community, “ said Danielle Lundquist, Rejoice’s minister of youth and family. “When we asked our youth to do something new they stepped up to the challenge. As the leader of the trip I couldn't have asked for a better group to serve with; always encouraging, loving, and persistent.”

 

“One of the biggest things I learned was patience and being adaptive to the situation because the junior high kids were looking to me as a leader,” Maehren said. 

 

“Our goal was to build connections and relationships with the community and each other,” said Damhof.

 

Lundquist added, “My hope walking away from this is that they [the youth] grew closer to God, their faith was strengthened and they saw how capable they are of changing people’s lives. They’re equipped with gifts to love and serve strangers and that week they learned how to do just that with small but selfless acts. Our youth are future leaders and giving them this opportunity has hopefully opened their eyes to see just how special their gifts are.”