About the Trip

Jazzing About Mission

Matthew 25:40

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” (Matthew 25:40. NIV)

As a result of fourteen very successful adventures sponsored by Grace Presbytery Youth Ministries Committee, two churches (First-Mexia and Trinity-The Colony), that will forever be linked by their hard work and dedication to God’s command to go out and serve, chose to sponsor the first annual multi-church, youth mission trip for high school age youth of the congregations of Grace Presbytery and beyond.

This trip is especially meaningful because it is in many ways a “second generation” trip – an off-shoot of the hard work and dedication of over 250 individuals representing 48 different churches from 1999 to 2010. This year adds participants from 2 new churches and 10 participants choosing to go on a mission trip for the first time. God is good!

Youth in Mission 2011, a team of 23 people from 5 churches, takes us to New Orleans, Louisiana to work with Project Homecoming, a joint effort of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) and the Presbytery of South Louisiana. One belief shared by all that have participated in previous year’s trips, is that each one of us is part of a larger Cloud of Witnesses, all fulfilling God command to serve, little by little, day by day, and linked together forever through our love for God and our dedication and hard work. In the summer of 2006, one of our mission teams traveled to Gulfport, Mississippi to serve those that were affected by Hurricane Katrina the previous year. The devastation we witnessed there and during a tour of New Orleans was massive. Areas of the city and complete neighborhoods were abandoned. Efforts in New Orleans at that time were focused on gutting houses and cleaning up after the storm. People had been driven from their homes for an undetermined amount of time. Wes Stiefer and Pam Hampson felt the call and returned to New Orleans just two weeks later to gut houses. Many of us since that time have felt the call to return to New Orleans yet again. This year, by working with Project Homecoming, we will be able to witness the progress of the last 5 years and assist in bringing people home. We feel this is a wonderful way to continue the work started by many others years ago. You can read more about Project Homecoming at http://projecthomecoming.net/