My week in Detroit didn't just change my perspective on the city, but on everywhere I have gone since then. What impacted me the most wasn't surprisingly the actual work itself, but the time in between - the prayer tour and walk, the morning "devotion", the debriefing, and talking with one of the staff of the CDC fishery and gardens, Anthony. Overall I learned to see things in a different way - for example, division in neighborhoods (how the newcomers pushed people who had lived there for years out of the way before even taking time to know their name). And how things can be changed in simple ways - a soccer program that tells impoverished youth about Christ, a couple moving in and redoing houses in a rundown neighborhood, artists coming together to make something abandoned beautiful again, people bringing the community together, CDC's gardens that provide produce, and a man who moved back to his old violent stricken neighborhood and started putting junk sculptures together and changing the feel and culture of an entire community.
I, myself, took from the experience that I don't have to solve world hunger to represent and show the world God, but if I could show kindness and be different and make people wonder "what is it about her" then I will have had a great impact on those I come in contact with. Going on this trip was an amazing, eye-opening experience, and I can't tell you how grateful I am for Gina and our CSM host, Maggie, and everyone on this trip, because this experience would never have been the same without them. I learned many life lessons this week and have made many memories I won't ever forget and I can confidently say if I wasn't going to graduate out of our youth group this year I would be the first one to turn in my application next year. I hope that all grades coming through this youth group get the chance to have this experience because I don't think anyone who went on the trip came out the same.
- 8th grade CSM trip participant
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1 comment:
Thank you for your amazing testimony of how God spoke to you and changed you through your CSM experience! You have a beautiful, sensitive heart open to God's leading and I'm sure God will use you in many creative ways to further His Kingdom. Let your CSM experience not be the END of an amazing trip, but let it be the BEGINNING of all that God will do in and through you, throughout your live.
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