Here are a few of the photos from Day 0 and Day 1 of the recent mission trip to Saint Paul (I didn’t take all these photos, even though I wish I could be at multiple places at the same time):
As usual, it was an incredible trip! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I love talking about the mission trip, even though most people get sick of hearing about it.
I wish I had thought to ask you last night! I’d definitely love to hear more – I really like that you are such an integral part of this.
Do you have any questions?
Where all did you go? Were you the ones to line up all of the activities, and how did the chaperone-to-kid ratio work?
I’m on the Education Committee at our church here in Ames, and there’s a middle school youth group missions trip going to MN this… fall? I think there’s a lot of trepidation on the part of the parents.
That was basically set by our own church. We like to have 1 chaperone per 4-5 kids. We always have a minimum of 2 male and 2 female chaperones for safe haven reasons. We don’t want a Catholic Church situation or the accusation of a Cahtolic Church situation. So always at least 2 adults of each gender. This trip had 14 kids and 4 adults.
Another church brought 1 adult and 11 kids. Their male chaperone couldn’t make the trip at the last second, so we helped watch their male children. Plus we took some of their kids into our group that went to the worksites.
The third church that was there had like 28 kids and maybe 4 or 5 adults. I can’t recall for sure. I remember their trip leader, the one male adult they brought, this woman that was annoying, and two other women. So they brought 5 for almost 30 kids. But our church wouldn’t have considered it right because they only had one adult male and 4 adult females.
The last 3 years, we’ve contracted with a group called Youthworks. I highly recommend them. 2 out of the 3 years have been amazing experiences. They have almost every minute of the day planned out from 6:45 AM (when the breakfast crew has to report to the kitchen to make breakfast) until lights out at 11:45 PM.
They are in charge of the site where you stay. Placing you in worksites. Organizing the shower situation. Organizing evening cultural activities. Plus they organize all your food on the trip. A crew makes breakfast in the morning. You pack a lunch for the worksite. Another crew makes supper that night.
When you get there, your church is broken into several groups. As many as you have adults. Then matched with other groups from other churches. For example, our church was split into 3 groups. Andy (the other male adult) and I were placed together, since we absorbed a group that didn’t have an adult leader.
This year groups were named after characters from FINDING NEMO. We were Marlin. Each day your group has a chore. It rotates throughout the week.
Breakfast Prep
Breakfast Cleanup
Building Maintenance
Dinner Prep
Dinner Cleanup
No group gets stuck doing the same chore every day. A typical day:
7:00 AM – Wakeup
7:30 Breakfast/Pack Lunch
8:15 – Devotionals
9 AM – Leave for Worksite
Eat Packed Lunch at Worksite
3 PM – Leave Worksite for Shower
3:30 PM – Shower
4:30 – 6 – Free time
6 PM – Dinner
6:30 – Leave for Evening Cultural Activity
8:30 – Return from Evening Activity – Large Group Gathering (Worship)
9:30 – Church Time (Discuss and decompress from day’s experiences)
10:45 – Lights out!
They are very aware of sending kids to certain locations. My group consisted of all high school students because where we went was more intense/less safe than where they sent the other groups.
Our group (#TeamMarlin) went to the Dorothy Day Center, which is a homeless shelter across the street from the Excel Center. When we walked into it, we walked through in excess of 100 homeless people. Which can be intimidating for some people.
Once we were inside we split our time making the lunch meal under the direction of their head chef Greg, serving lunch, talking to the clients, singing for them, working in their food distribution warehouse, and clean rooms in another building that is being repurposed while the Dorothy Day Center is torn down and rebuilt.
Other groups spent time at organizations like Boys and Girls Club, Open Hands, Salvation Army, and Kids Club. Kids Club is a VBS that Youthworks runs. Other groups seemed to have been setup with people in the local community to do yardwork and other activities.
However, here is the thing about Youthworks. As far as I know, they only do summer programs. I don’t know of any fall/weekend programs that they run.
There are lots of other youth mission works companies out there. Youthworks just happens to be the one I think the most highly of.
We’ve went with a few others and they set you up with housing and the worksites, but they were way less organized and when you were done for the day, you were pretty much on your own.
I can’t help you with the trepidation of the parents. Tell them to wear a cup, the world’s a tough place. An important part of the mission trip experience is being pushed out of your comfort zone and seeing that people are people. Seeing that not everybody has the same life.
You don’t grow from not being pushed. Not experiencing new things.
I would add that I’ve been on 6 youth mission trips now. I’ve never feared for my safety and I’ve been in some places.
Last year we walked door to door and knocked on doors to give away food in a neighborhood that was the scene of a race riot just a few weeks later.
The place we stayed in Saint Paul was right next to where the Philando Castile protests entered the interstate the week before we were staying there.
I’ve been some places.
That is an incredible, very well-organized trip. I think our associate pastor just knows a guy who’s maybe a pastor up in the cities, and had planned on just sort of figuring out a plan on his own – and since the guy he knew in the cities was going to let the group use his house, but he wasn’t actually going to be home, it was going to be odd. I think they only had one chaperone per gender, too, which seemed like a questionable decision. I think your chaperone quantities and gender ratios, attention to detail/organization, and just overall projects are awesome.
We went to Colorado when I was in high school for a missions trip with our church. I was the only one out of our group of friends who was able to go, except a couple of guys a few grades older. We had a really big group of chaperones, and had well-organized projects – I remember my mom being so much more comfortable than when I was thinking about going to Costa Rica, and there was NO formal plan.
That sounds kind of iffy, unless the Associate Pastor has some really good connections in Minnesota. We would consider something like that in the Quad Cities, but only because we have a former Youth Pastor plugged in to that city pretty well.
I would add that there is such a thing as too many chaperones. If you can get a mix of parents and nonparents, that is ideal. Although finding people who want to do this, when they don’t have a kid going is pretty darn rare.
We had two parents of 4 kids on the trip. Then me and Sarah G. Sarah G. is a 20 year old former member of the youth group. So it is a good mix.
Some churches have a written rule (and we came pretty close this year) to having a no parents/with their children when you break up the church into groups. An important aspect of this trip is the spreading of the wings. The kids get more out of the trip if they don’t have Mom or Dad constantly watching/on their backs.
Same can go with just having too many adults around.
I would say it takes the right kind of adult, but I think that might be arrogant. It is probably best for their to be a good mix of adults. This is where Andy and I make a good team, I think. Actually I think all 4 of us make a good team. We fill each other’s holes very well.
Tiffany is good at paperwork and talking to other adults and organizing things. I’m good at leading group time and the more religious aspects of the trip. Andy is good at being the clown, but also motivating the kids to work hard. Sarah G. is good at relating to the kids, since she isn’t much older than them. She has had their experiences recently. Plus she speaks their language (literally) and has their interests in social media and music and fashion… But since she is 2 years removed from high school, she also has an adult’s perspective as well. Her only problem is that she looks so young that many of the kids from the other church’s don’t/won’t see/treat her like an adult.
For a sorta strange example, a few years back when Sarah G. was one of the kids on the trip, she was one of the kids we had to fight the hardest on the shorts policy. Youthworks has a strict shorts policy. They have to be longer than the length of your fingertips when your arms are by your side. Now that she is on the other side of the coin and sees the reason for the policy, she is the enforcer of this policy. I don’t think we had to mention it to our kids once this year.
Everybody has many more strengths than that, but I’m trying to keep this relatively short. I probably wrote about Sarah G. more because I had to defend her to groups of parents that don’t like her during youth group this year. I’m not entirely sure the reason why. They kept citing that she is immature and sometimes makes bad decisions.
Yeah, she is 20 years old. Do you want me to judge you by the decisions you made when she is 20 years old? Funny thing is that she has matured quite a bit in just the last couple of years and she is a HUGE asset to the program.
The other funny thing is that when it looked like Tiffany wasn’t going to be able to go, none of those people stepped up to be a chaperone like Sarah G. Even though, she doesn’t have any PTO for her job. She had to take a week off completely unpaid. Most of the critics have PTO, I’m sure.
But I got off on a tangent/rant there.
My point is that I think the 4 of us make an awesome team. I’m hoping that next year there will be room for Amber (another 20 year old) to make the trip.
I might’ve mentioned that there is always an adult from another church that annoys me. I’m sure I annoy the adults from other churches. However, I can’t overestimate how important a good chaperone team can be.
The last thing I’ll add is that I think you can get by with 1 and 1 in the gender department and still be following safe have guidelines. I think our church just takes it farther because we want to be double safe.
And if you’re wondering what Sarah G. looks like, she is in the first picture of today’s post.
I did not get the impression that the AP had that great of connections in Minnesota. Our Youth Education director didn’t seem incredibly on-board with the idea – her child is in the class, and I believe she was going to chaperone just because she felt more comfortable that way.
That makes total sense that you can have too many, especially if they don’t fit together or with the kids. I would think that having you be able to talk with them (I can totally see you leading group) and Sarah being able to relate would be a great one-two punch. (And she’s adorable, doesn’t look like a miscreant or anything.) I would think that an objective parent would look at someone who maybe had made a few bad decisions as a kid and then straightened up so much that they were leading a youth group to be a great role model?! I guess I was sort of a goody-goody, though, and my parents likely would have had troubles with that (but you have met Mom, so…). It really sounds like you guys all compliment each other perfectly.
I know you get teased for arrogance often – I don’t think saying it takes a certain type of adult to work with teens in this capacity is arrogant, though. It’s true. I think it takes a very particular type of personality to do many things in life – I don’t know that I have the patience to deal with teens. I volunteered on a field day in Alice’s school, and I sort of wanted to punch all of the classes over 3rd grade. I think it is a particular type of patience, and the ability to deflect and redirect in ways that aren’t as obvious as you would use with a 5-year-old.
So did this Minnesota Mission Trip not happen?
I’m sure Sarah G. would love being described as “adorable”. When I say that she has made some “bad decisions”, they are not bad decisions that would get somebody in trouble with the law or anything like that even. They are just typical stupid decisions make by kids. Like one of the dumbest things I remember there being a controversy about was that maybe there was a picture of her at a party where there was alcohol on Snapchat or something ridiculous like that.
I’d be on the opposite end of the spectrum. I enjoy working with high school students, but when they get much younger than that, that is where the punching desire comes in.
I did Vacation Bible School for 1 year. That was enough of dealing with large groups of little kids for me.
I don’t know anything about this arrogance of which you speak.