A Helping Hand

By Staff Report

This article appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of Texoma Living!.

“I’m on a mission,” is not a statement often heard coming from the lips of today’s youth, unless it refers to the latest video game. It appears that young people are not as active in foreign countries as they were in the hippie days. As always, appearances can be deceiving. Do some digging, and you will find that today’s youth are concerned about things besides the latest movie or game. Some are very concerned about affairs abroad. Some are even dedicating their lives to work in foreign countries.

Durant, OK., native Serena Kinnamon, 16, is one such individual. After going to Peru for two weeks in the summer of 2006 and Africa for one month in the summer of 2007, Kinnamon knew that mission work was her calling. She homeschooled in order to graduate high school early, and she plans on going to Africa in September of 2008 for two years. She also hopes to go to Thailand and Mexico. After that, she will return to the USA to get her pediatric degree and then go back to the missionary field.

Kinnamon realizes that she is giving up a lot. “Senior year is important,” she said, “and I gave up basketball, which was really important to me.” Going into a foreign country, she expected to see things similar to what she was used to in the US. “I’d been involved in Vacation Bible School before and I thought this was going to be similar.” She was shocked at how little the people knew about God. “They are so innocent,” she said. Small comforts were also hard to come by—“I didn’t shower for 12 days!” Kinnamon took her missionary trips with a group called Global Expeditions, a non-denominational Christian group that sends youth on mission trips worldwide.

Holly Boerner, a junior at Austin College, spent her January Term at the Kamashi Orphanage and School in Ethopia along with several of her friends from Austin College and her father, while many classmates were studying abroad. She also worked at the orphanage for eight weeks over the summer of 2007. In an email to friends and family before her second trip to the orphanage, Boerner describes the culture shock of returning to the US.

“We are also a country of extreme excess—I am still disgusted at the amount of food that we waste, especially at restaurants. I know many people say, ‘There’s starving people in Africa’ when someone leaves food on their plates, and this I have always known, but it is an entirely different ballgame when I look at leftovers and think, ‘Gaza might not have anything to eat tonight’. It is a very heart-breaking and earth-shaking experience to meet your friends at the trash pit, friends who have been waiting to scavenge through your waste for food, or anything, really.”

To raise money for the orphanage, Boerner started Crave Change, where she lets the world know about the orphans, sells T-shirts and takes donations.

An emotion all of these young missionaries express to sum up their experiences is heartbreak for these people. Perhaps the world needs more of that, so that the statistics become more than numbers and look more like human faces.

Websites for more information:

Holly’s blog: http://www.cravechange.blogspot.com/
Crave Change website: http://www.cravechange.org
Global Expeditions website: http://www.globalexpeditions.com/