Mission Trip

OK, so it's been a while since I've written. Not that there hasn't been much going on to write about, but rather just the opposite. God's been busy in southeast Wisconsin, and I've been trying my best to keep up with the action. The few down times I find myself wanting to blog, I'm deterred by the 90 degree temperature in my study.

But no more excuses. I'm bursting at the seams in eager anticipation for our congregational mission trip to begin tomorrow. I say "congregational" because it's not the typical trip with a group of teens and a few chaperones. The travel team heading out consists of 7 adults, 5 teens, and 5 young children. The youngest child is 13 months, and our group spans 6 decades.

While the travel team is away for the week, there are opportunities for others in the congregation who can't travel still to participate. We'll have a commissioning service in worship tomorrow and on the following Sunday, the travel team will lead worship by integrating their experiences from this week. Each worshipper will receive a prayer card with a person from the travel team's name on it, and an invitation to the homecoming dinner on Friday to hear the witness and see pictures from the travel team's service.

We started looking for ways to do a cross-generational mission trip, way back in September. But we found few possibilities for children below the age of 7, and even those were very few. Then in January I spoke with the program director of Imago Dei Village, an ELCA camp in Clintonville, Wisconsin. We worked out a plan for our church to stay at IDV the week of summer camp and travel off site each day to our service project. By March, we had the plans made and we could start forming a travel team from the congregation.

The camp director then connected us with St. John Lutheran Church in nearby Marion. We will be working with their food pantry, thrift store, and remodeling apartments for their low income housing. Even the youngest kids will be part of the service by shopping for food donations, sorting clothes, and making art projects to welcome the soon to be tenants into their new homes.

Not only will the service ministry strengthen our faith and share our witness, but on top of all that we get the wonderfully spiritual experiences of family camp, like worship, campfire, Bible study and more! We're in for a wild week filled with Holy Spirit. Keep our 17 missionaries in your prayers this week. I'm sure I'll have much to share with you when we return.