YPCA Trips: The Wild vs. the Mild

Mulching blueberries in the hot sun, spreading chicken manure for a garden and teaching English to refugees who speak almost none aren't the normal spring break activities we think of.

But several dozen EMU students chose to serve and learn in these ways as part of the Young People's Christian Association spring break Y-trips. Twelve students, myself included, traveled to Comer, Georgia where we stayed at Jubilee Partners.

Jubilee is a Christian community where life is lived a little differently than most of the world. One of the main purposes of the community is their work with political refugees from around the world. At Jubilee, refugee families, mostly single parent families, learn the basics of daily life in the United States, beginning with skills we take for granted like turning on a light switch to learning the English language.

The refugees come to the U.S. because of severe persecution in their home country as a result of their ethnicity, religion or social status. Jubilee works with the family for three months and then they are sent out to make their own life in this country. Our interaction with the refugees came through volunteering in the school, assisting with teaching English, and also during free time where we spent a lot of time playing with the refugee children. " Interacting with the refugees at jubilee was a fun experience. Their desire to learn English and the way they graciously welcomed us into their homes was humbling," was first-year Rachael Clemmer's response to the refugees.

During our time at Jubilee there were three refugee families preparing for life in the U.S. Two of the families were from the Sudan and the third were Iraqi Kurds. We spoke no Arabic and they spoke very little English, and yet to the children no language barrier seemed to exist. A push on the swing, a game of ping-pong, or a hug didn't need to be translated, and so we spent many evenings enjoying the warm Georgia weather and the joy of simply playing with the children.

While Jubilee's main focus is their work with the refugees, they are a committed Christian community that believes strongly in their way of life. They shared daily with our group in sessions about different topics that as a community and individually they are passionate about. We learned about the challenges and joys of community living, the moral dilemma of the death penalty, and the plight of refugees worldwide.

The community is focused on Christ and they try to live out His calling with their daily life in many challenging and unique ways. From growing much of their own food and eating very simply to sharing economically as a community, they challenged our view of what it means to be a Christian. "Overall the whole week was amazing; it was such a thought provoking time and it made me think about how I live my life," was how first-year Amy Yoder described her week.

The trip to Jubilee Partners was not the only Y-trip over spring break. Other groups of students traveled to Kentucky where they worked with the SWAP program and the rural poor, to Philadelphia where they learned about urban poverty and environmental degradation and to Mississippi where they contributed to Hurricane Katrina cleanup.

It wasn't exactly fun in the sun of spring break in Florida, but the Y-trips were a time of joy, learning, and thinking about our lives and our place in this world.