July 28, 2022

By Lisa Collins

Last week twelve middle and high school students and three adults ventured to Mechanicsburg, PA on the first Galilee youth mission trip in the post-pandemic era.

We had an ominous start to the trip when a massive thunderstorm knocked trees into the road, but we arrived safely at the Silver Spring Retreat Center just a bit late on Monday. That night we talked about the patience such a trip required and did team building activities as we prepared for our two planned days of serve work. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday, our group split in two to tackle projects at two sites: Mission Central and New Hope Ministries. 

Mission Central is a vast warehouse that stores and distributes humanitarian resources for the mission work of hundreds of nonprofits including Methodism’s disaster response body, UMCOR.  Here we assembled hygiene kits with supplies purchased from our Rummage Sale proceeds and inspected disaster kits sent by other groups, including flood buckets sent from the Virginia Annual Conference.

New Hope Ministries is a Christian social services agency in with eight locations in Pennsylvania. Here we were able to work directly with community members as they picked out groceries in New Hope’s  free food panty. That was a different experience for our youth, since our previous work had been out of sight of the actual people being helped. We also worked in New Hope’s warehouse and prepared for their upcoming school supply drive.

By working at both locations, we were able to experience many new things and saw the variety of ways people are being helped. But it would not be a youth trip if we did not also have fun! We played glow-in-the-dark mini golf, football and kickball, lots of Uno and other card games, and had a whole day at Hershey Park. A highlight for me was singing praise songs around the fire Wednesday night.  It was truly a worship experience.

When we wrapped up on Friday and spoke about what we learned and what we were thankful for, there were two comments that I thought were powerful. One student said “Joy can come out of anything. You just have to find it” and another said, “God calls us to use our power to do good things.”

It was satisfying to spend time with Galilee youth as they found joy and did good things.