UMC mission trip combines work, meditation on life
Pastor Harrell Braddock Jr. asked teens on the First United Methodist Church’s Youth mission trip to reflect daily on seeing God in the world as they worked and played in Utopia this summer.
The 17 high school students plus Pastor Braddock, youth coordinator Valorie Mahler and her husband, Kelly, made their seventh trip to Utopia to help the town five hours south of Olney refresh its city park. The teens packed a lot into their four-day trip, painting and scrubbing posts, gates, tables, and trash bins, then repainting signs for the Methodist church.
At the local school, they cut the shrubs surrounding the school to comply with new security guidelines and raked and cleaned the grounds. They visited 93-year-old Dorothy Parks, whose garden was a project taken on by the youth mission five years ago.
“She was one of our first clients,” Mrs. Mahler said. “She had been a registered nurse and had a beautiful yard. When she got so sick and bedridden her yard grew up to be like a jungle. It was a huge job and it took us two days to clear her yard. Every year we visit her and she’s still in the bed and always has a good attitude and wisdom to share with the kids.” Every day, the teens broke into groups to study and give presentations on each chapter of the Book of James, one of whose themes is perseverance in the face of trials. “We also played,” Mrs. Mahler said. “We went to the Frio Bat Flight where millions of bats fly out of this cave at sundown. The other two evenings we went to Garner State Park and they had a jukebox dance.”
On the final day of the trip, the group drove to Uvalde, the site of the May 24 school shootings that killed 19 students and two teachers.
“We didn’t tell the kids we were going to Uvalde, but my husband printed the bios of each individual of each that were killed,” Mrs. Mahler said. “We had them in envelopes and each person got one – somebody got two – we went to the memorial park and it was a moving, emotional time … I think it really hit home about the preciousness of life. There was a family there that was replacing the cross of their little girl. It was a very serious time and it was a good reflection of what can really happen in the world and how we can help the legacy of these little kids and their parents live on.”
The teens earned the funds to make the trip, including their accommodations, meals, and supplies, with a hamburger fundraiser in Olney earlier this year. “Our town is just so supportive of this youth group,” Mrs. Mahler said.