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Teenagers learn and serve internationally
SALUNGA, Pa. – Eighteen high school age youths gave part of their lives this summer to serve in Lithuania, Belize, Germany, and Macau with Eastern Mennonite Missions in Summer Training Action Teams (STAT).
Friends and family members packed out the EMM Salunga meetinghouse on the evening of August 10 to welcome them back. The teams regaled the audience with pictures and stories of their newly acquired skills – like how to eat mile-long Chinese noodles or how to sand down church benches without wearing off your fingertips. (In case you’re wondering, a little duct tape helps!)
Highlights included a bike trip with Lithuanian youth, a German children’s camp and painting work at a German Mennonite church center, summer Bible schools and conversational English classes with the Macau Mennonite Church, and church remodeling and summer Bible school in three different villages in Belize.
For many of the youth it was their first real cross-cultural experience, and they were full of observations about differing customs, values, and worldviews.
The Macau team, for example, spent time reflecting on why the Chinese set heaping plates of food – which eventually spoils – out on the sidewalks, during the “Hungry Ghost Festival.” The Belize team observed that their host family’s only clock was perpetually set at 8:15 – and that no one seemed to care.
Training Director Doreen Ebersole told the group, “It strikes me that the benches the Belize STAT team helped to refinish are a good picture of what God has done in your lives during your service. You have been stripped of old paint. You got a new layer of varnish. But we still recognize that you’re basically the same bench!”
The theme for short-term service this year is “Give your life,” calling youth and young adults to see Christian service as something worth devoting yourself to, beyond simply going to youth group activities. Find more information at emm.org/short-term.
It’s not too early to begin planning for STAT next summer, June 21 through August 7, 2007. STAT is for youth 15 or older who are serious about growing in their relationships with God and serving others, by being part of a team of four to six youth. STAT training provides four weeks of intense spiritual growth and community life in an inner-city location, followed by a month of cross-cultural outreach. Outreach locations for next year include Guatemala and Central Asia, with other possibilities in West Africa and Europe.
Youth Evangelism Service (YES) teams are for young adults ages 18-30; teams of four to six people receive eight to ten weeks of training at a discipleship center in the inner city before serving for four or eight months with a congregation, a ministry, or missionaries. YES assignments conclude with a few weeks of post-field training.
YES teams beginning January 21, 2007, are planned for The Gambia, where the team will assist with discipleship, basic English classes, and agricultural projects; China, where the team will study Chinese while relating with students who are eager to learn about culture and religion outside of China; Lithuania, where the team will serve with the Lithuania Free Christian Church as they develop a discipleship training program and assist with youth-oriented summer programs, including a 10-day bike trip; Central Asia, where the team will serve in a Muslim context in a former Soviet republic alongside long-term workers. Other possible locations include Atlanta (Ga.) and Chile.
For more information, contact Sherrie Ober at 717 898-2251
-Jewel Showalter
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