Middle School Week on Mission | June 2024
What happens when you pair serving at Vacation Bible School with serving other local ministries, and sprinkle it with team building activities and devotional reading and journaling? You get students (this year, eight students from three different partner churches) who grow deeper in their faith and understanding of what it means to serve God and others. The second annual Middle School Week on Mission was absolutely a week to remember for our 5 – 8 grade crew. Our students worked hard, almost 12 hour days, which made it feel like an out of town overnight trip even though we went home to our own beds each night!
Most of our Middle School Week on Mission (MSWM) team started out by chipping in during Vacation Bible School (VBS) set up weekend, before their week of service had even begun. They helped fill the church with balloons, coral, seaweed, and approximately 12.4 million fish (if you ask them). During VBS itself, students served in a variety of spaces: as crew leaders traveling with the elementary school attendees, helping share Godly Play stories, leading outdoor games, helping kids memorize their “sticky scripture” verses, performing memorable science experiments, and leading music and motions from the front.
After lunch each day the MSWM students would help reset VBS for the next day by cleaning, restocking supplies, fixing decorations, and of course hanging up the God Sighting Sea Creatures the kids had written during closing. On Thursday afternoon, they spent a majority of their time helping prepare for the Family Fun Day on Friday — staging sandboxes for treasure hunts, creating craft stations, setting up games, and practicing their face painting skills.
But our week of service wasn’t just about Good Sam’s Vacation Bible School. Good Sam Youth leaders believe that serving locally, outside of the church is an important part of spiritual development and our growth as Christians. As such, one of the organizations we decided to serve with was Amnion, a pregnancy support center that Good Sam’s Mission Committee supports regularly. This was both engaging and eye opening for our students, as they took on a variety of tasks from cleaning up around the Norristown building to packing diapers to writing encouraging cards for expectant parents. Packaging the diapers and seeing the Amnion “store” where parents can pick out baby clothes and supplies helped students to think critically about the reality facing many women (and their partners) surrounding unplanned pregnancies and the lack of social supports. For many of our students, they cited the time packing diapers as their favorite part of the week — but that might be because they turned it into a bit of a race!
Another afternoon we spent some time discussing food and housing insecurity that many people, kids and adults, even in our own community, face. We talked about what that might look like, what some possible causes might be, why it might be easy for us to be unaware of it, and what we can do to help. In partnership with a non–profit organization named The Giving Tree we packaged several different kinds of kits aimed to help provide dignity and physical nourishment or protection. The Giving Tree then distributed these kits made by students to a variety of food pantries, hospitals, and homeless shelters in Pennsylvania. It was moving to see some of the messages the students wrote to package alongside socks, bandages and granola bars.
As we also discussed some service ministries within our church, MSWM participants were able to further apply their knowledge on food insecurity as they went door to door in the neighborhood surrounding the church collecting food items for the Food Closet here at Good Sam. Students also spent some time preparing care packages for the homebound members of the Good Samaritan congregation for our clergy to take to them on Pastoral Care visits. These encouraging messages, Bible verses and food items have been much appreciated by many of our elderly community members.
The week of service was capped off with an afternoon of baking the tasty treats for our fundraiser and of course the much anticipated day at Dorney Park as a team. One of the sweetest moments of the week, according to our Youth Director, Jess, was when a massive thunderstorm brought the entire park to a sudden standstill. During the downpour, our middle school friends began to get scared and nervous about the storm, until one of the eighth graders suggested they pray together. Standing a little way off, the adult leaders saw the students grab hands and form their own prayer circle to pray for protection from the storm and calm for their nervous friends. Moments after they finished praying, they ran into the rain singing and dancing to “My Lighthouse,” the theme song from this year’s VBS.
Throughout the week the MSWM students were given time to process our service projects in their trip journals, where they also completed Lectio-Divina style guided scripture journaling. These journals also included a space where we took turns writing “shoutouts” to each other for the amazing things we had seen during the week. It is our hope that students will be able to look back on the Middle School Week on Mission as a time they grew deeper in their faith, formed Christian friendships that will last, and caught a glimpse of God’s heart for EVERYONE in our communities.
High School Standing Rock Trip | July 2024
Our Youth Ministry Director, Jess Campbell, identifies the single most impactful part of her teenage years in terms of faith formation as Good Sam’s mission partnership with the Standing Rock Episcopal Community in North Dakota. In addition to a changed perspective on life and faith here on the “Main Line,” she formed lifelong friendships and was led to the discovery of a call to youth ministry. This truth, coupled with her experience living and working on Standing Rock for 10 years contributed greatly to the decision to take high school students to North Dakota this summer, something that had not been done since the summer of 2009.
This July eight students and four leaders traveled to the Standing Rock Reservation for a week of service to their camp and youth ministry. While this was a domestic mission trip, the differences in culture and lived experiences were vast. According to census data for the 3,143 counties in the United States, Chester County, Pennsylvania is ranked as the 40th wealthiest while Sioux County, North Dakota comes in at number 3,138, or as having the sixth lowest household income in the country. In fact, census data supports the fact that six of the ten most financially impoverished counties in the United States are on Native American reservations. Generational trauma (largely imparted by Government and Church organizations) continues to impact these communities. Serving in such communities helps students to learn how to live into the Biblical imperative to care for the hungry, thirsty, materially in need, sick or imprisoned in Matthew 25.
Engaging in ministry alongside our Lakota brothers and sisters from Standing Rock was also a great introduction to cross-cultural communication and relationship building for our students. The beauty of God’s diversity plan for the world is on full display when we befriend those from other cultures and traditions. Indigenous Christians in particular have much to teach us about caring for the earth, experiencing God in all things, handing down faith and the traditions that help us experience it, doing life in community (as seen in the book of Acts), and the deeply rooted joy of the Lord that supersedes all of life’s ebbs and flows.
Our team began their week in North Dakota by attending the wacipi (powwow) in the neighboring community of Bear Soldier (McLaughlin, SD). The district’s powwow committee provided a community feed where we were fed with an abundance of sloppy joes before we found our seats in the arbor. Several of our students took the opportunity to dance during the intertribal dancing and we also saw Deacon Angela Goodhouse’s daughter Terri win the girl’s Fancy Shawl Special and be presented with a Star Quilt. The next morning, the team was able to further engage with Lakota culture by admiring the custom made winter count behind the altar at St. Luke’s Church in Fort Yates. A winter count is a pictographic mnemonic device in which the Lakota people recorded outstanding events, with each image representing a year and a story. The Luke Winter Count depicts key moments from Jesus’ life as told in the gospel of Luke on a tanned buffalo hide.
We then dove into work, deep cleaning and de-winterizing Camp Gabriel in preparation for the three day youth camp we helped orchestrate. Coming alongside the Native Young Life team was an amazing relational experience for our crew as they worked together to execute skits, games, tie dye, hikes to the butte, tubing at Froelich Dam, times of prayer in the chapel and worship during club. We capped off our week with a family fun night at our former partner parish, St. Luke’s in Fort Yates (including food, bounce houses, face paint and a massive ice water fight). This week was unbelievably valuable and impactful for our students and we are excited to have been invited back again for the summer of 2025!
In Their Own Words
The Standing Rock mission trip truly exceeded my expectations in a way that changed my life for the better. I wholeheartedly love the experience I had and the people I met along the way. I will forever cherish the time I had, which leads me to believe God's plan is to have me back there next year. —Liv, grade 11
The trip was great because I made a lot of new friends and can’t wait to go back. —Jonathan, grade 10
I think the Standing Rock mission trip is an unbelievable experience because you have the choice to connect with kids from your community, and kids who aren't. it truly opens your eyes to see a bigger picture of what God's plan is through many different perspectives. —Lucy, grade 10
The Standing Rock trip was great because I got to meet new people and working with them bonded us closer. It was the best trip because everyone got together to help one another. —Matt, grade 10
The Standing Rock trip highlighted the reality of generational impact—both negative and positive. We saw the influence of inherited trauma, but also the legacy of sustained, contextualized ministry within a community. —Josh, volunteer leader