Taking it Home
by Ujunwa Anakwenze, Summer Missions Program staffPictured: Ujunwa (left) leads a youth group in musical worship at a local park.
During my first week on staff with the summer missions program, I worked with a close-knit youth group from a small town in Vermont. I particularly enjoyed connecting with the three girls in my small group on Thursday after dinner because they were very willing to share ways in which they were struggling or growing. On that night, I found that the girls really wanted to talk about poverty.
You see, on Tuesday night, we had created a "poverty simulation" for the youth in which they took on the identities of individuals and families living in poverty. They were taxed with the responsibility of feeding themselves and their families, while at the same time securing housing for two consecutive nights. Many of the teens were really struck by how difficult and real poverty is, even though they may have been blind to it before. Each of the youth learned about the hard choices and judgment that come with having limited resources and needing to rely largely on the compassion of others.
Then on Wednesday night, we took the youth to Boston Commons so that they could interact with, feed, and worship with homeless men and women who spend there evenings (and perhaps nights) there. For nearly all of the teens, this was the first time they had spoken to homeless people.
Needless to say, during our Thursday small group time, these girls had homelessness on their minds. One of the girls told us that she was so inspired by the homeless outreach ministry we had partnered with that she wanted to start a similar one in her town. She was so unsettled by the reality of homelessness that she could not help but take it as a call to action. Then another girl in the small group shared that she would like to join in bringing the initiative back to their hometown. I encouraged them to share their idea with the rest of the youth group because it clearly had the potential to take root and flourish. This was an action-oriented group of teens and I am confident that they will take home what they learned here so that they can transform the hearts of those where they live.
