Mission Trip Analysis

Physical labor is not my forté. I’m the embodiment of the stereotypical female - in no way am I even remotely strong or capable of manual labor. So you can imagine how useful I was going to be on a weeklong mission trip in Kentucky fixing a house. An actual, real-life house. There was no way I was going to be any help at all, but I wanted to try...sort of. Part of me wanted to go but another part of me really, really did not. I do not enjoy working, nor do I like traveling outside of Massachusetts. Once I had thought about it, though, I realized I had absolutely no excuse not to go. For starters, my mum was going as well, invalidating my homesickness excuse. It was also going to happen in the first week of July, a time that I would otherwise …show more content…
As it turns out, I did not end up being a complete waste of space the entire time. Shocking, I know. When I eventually got to the work site, it became clear that the mission trip was not entirely about the actual fixing of the house. The people who owned the house mattered too. It was just as much about construction as it was connection. The house my group and I helped on was owned by a lovely family who were struggling financially. A family with a husband who had recently lost his job, a wife, two young kids, and about six dogs I could handle. Ripping up an entire floor with just a crowbar? Not exactly my thing. But being force fed blueberries by a 3-year-old? Any day of the week. With the idea of connecting with the family in mind, my group ended up forming a strong bond with the family while still getting impressive amounts of work done on the house. We had just five work days to get a lot done: the floor in the kitchen and living room needed to be ripped up and replaced, shingles needed to be added to parts of the roof, and the house needed a new skirt. In addition, the mother mentioned how she really wanted a pretty house, so we decided to paint both her kitchen walls and ceiling. So by the end of the week, my group collectively decided that we wanted to do something special for the family. We wanted to thank them for allowing us, complete and utter strangers, in their home to make a ruckus all day everyday for a solid week. As hard as it was for us, …show more content…
They had no idea what would be in store for them. Granted, they had seen the daily progress we had made in their house but they had not yet seen it totally cleaned without loads of power tools in the way. So that’s exactly what we did. We mopped the floors, washed the walls, cleaned the counters, and put their appliances back where they belonged. To top it all off, we made a small gift for the family - a mop, some flowers, a homemade card for the parents, and a couple of coloring books and stickers for the kids. Nothing too big or fancy, but something to showed we