Students from two Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese of Baltimore recently lived a faith experience in which they stepped out of their comfort zone, got to know other realities and appreciated joy in the midst of need in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
Miguel Blackwood, Luke McCaffery, Daniel Leak, Iain Anderson
Andrew Cortina, and teacher Patrick Rogers (Courtesy Mount St. Joseph)
Conventual Franciscan Father Chris Dudek, campus minister at Archbishop Curley School in Baltimore, accompanied 10 students on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic June 10-17. They visited Casa San Marcos, a rehabilitation center for children with disabilities located in San Pedro de Macoris, as well as Casa Santa Ana, a village built and completed in 2005 that serves the most vulnerable children.
The rehabilitation center belongs to the nongovernmental organization Fondazione Francesca Rava – NPH (Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos), which is present in several Latin American countries and has an initiative called Catholic Mission Trips, in which young people from different countries visit its different locations to live a missionary experience.
Curley students visited several places where the foundation houses and educates children, and, together with the NPH staff, they helped in various tasks such as building a house and assisting on a farm, Father Dudek said.
The students attended daily Mass and had times of faith sharing. They also had the opportunity to play baseball with a Major League Baseball recruiter.
“One of the reflections was that all the children who were there were just so happy and so joyful that I think that sometimes we can be caught up in things that are not really important and lose that joy that actually comes from relationships and from God,” Father Dudek said.
The priest said the trip was the first international experience of its kind that students from his school have participated in 15 years.
“I’m hoping that we can continue to offer this to all of our students,” he said. “There are so many opportunities to encounter Jesus in those who are in need right here in Baltimore, right here in our school.”
Cody Rice, 16, participated in the mission trip, expecting to encounter sad and depressed people but experiencing the opposite.
“When we got there – not only at the orphanage, but on the street – all the kids would run up to us and insist that we play with them. They’re not that much different than us. It really opens your eyes to what else is out there in life. An experience like this, especially for me, was very humbling. It showed me how much I have and how much sometimes I take for granted.”
Braeden Mullen was also part of the group. The student said the experience helped him grow in his Catholic faith.
“Being able to help the special-needs kids and being able to do construction work in their village was really nice, and I found myself bonding with those, even if there was a language barrier,” he said. “When you see that other people are expressing their happiness with your help, it makes you feel good, and it makes you realize that what you’re doing, you can do all the time, and not just on these mission trips, but in everyday life.”
Ryan Slattery, service coordinator and Spanish teacher at Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington, accompanied 12 students from June 29 to July 5 to serve the community of the Carlos Wesley Methodist Church, located in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“What blew me away – from the students – is the way they talked about their faith and how they saw Christ in so many of the people that they encountered, specifically the kids, and they also really appreciated how much they grew together as a brotherhood, how much they grew together as friends, as classmates,” said Slattery, noting that the trip was coordinated through an NGO called Praying Pelican Missions.
Students spent the mornings studying the Bible and their afternoons helping on parish grounds.
“We were doing things like cleaning up the sanctuary, we were cleaning up the outside grounds, cutting grass, taking out weeds,” Slattery said. “We went to a train station where there’s an impoverished community. We had made sandwiches previously, and we got the opportunity to hand them out to anyone at the train station who was in need of food, and we got to talk with them and to pray with them as well.”
In their free time, the students also visited El Yunque, a national rainforest.
Nicholas Shaw, 17, was part of the group of students from the school.
“I could feel that through the Masses we had, especially in Puerto Rico, where they incorporated music, dancing and singing, I really had an experience where I felt God standing right in front of me, guiding me, doing service, helping out my brothers,” he said.
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