Cross Lutheran Sends 65 People on Mission Trip

recently sent 65 people to Youngstown, OH, for eight days through Group Workcamps.

The group consisted of middle and high school students, as well as some adults for supervision. The workcamp mission was to help people in Youngstown with household tasks such as painting, scraping, deck building and other carpentry. 

Participants were put through a nearly 7 month training program to prepare.  Topics included tool training, safety and servitude.

Each person also had to raise $750 to go on the trip.

“Here you have a group of teenagers and adults who paid money to go do work on their summer vacation,” said, Bill Ziech, Cross Lutheran’s youth ministry director. “That takes someone special.”

Fundraising efforts included sending out prayer letters to congregation members to ask for prayer and funding for the trip.

Hannah Riehle-Moller, 17, helped an elderly woman paint her house while Josiah Rodriguez, 16, a resident build a deck and install a sliding door. 

Ziech has been leading the trips for Cross Lutheran for nearly a decade. 

Residents chosen for the program go through a 2 year process to determine if the safety, size and need can accommodate a Group Workcamp crew. In Youngstown’s case, many residents were strapped after the steel industry diminished in the 1970s.

“They got stuck with, ‘Do I provide food for the family or paint the house?’ so the house gets neglected,” said Ziech.

The group from Cross Lutheran was joined by other groups from across the country.  Participants were split into groups of four or five. Within those groups, roles such as progress reporter and devotion leader were assigned.

Groups worked from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. from Monday through Friday. It was the second such trip for Riehle-Moller.

“I was really praying just to ask God to have a really good experience and to bond really well with my crew and the 65 other people going," said Riehle-Moller. “A highlight for me was just how God made himself known in a way that he hasn’t for me before.”

Rodriguez, who has been on two trips before this one, also enjoyed the religious fulfillment camp brought him.

“I was completely broken then remade in the same night,” he said. “If you are cast far away from the faith, this will bring you back.”

A highlight for Zieche was watching the way God changed lives. He told the story of a young man from Cross Lutheran who watched a house go up in flames after a mishap inside. 

“He really felt that that was God’s way of getting his attention, through a house fire,” Ziech said. “And it did.”

Ziech said every American teen should consider participating in a workcamp.

“It’s an opportunity to serve, but more than that it’s an opportunity for God to open up our eyes," he said. "And that’s why I keep offering and doing something like this.”  

For more information on Group Workcamp visit, http://www.groupworkcamps.com.