Commissioned by Christ has organized mission trips for Catholics and their families since 2008. To celebrate its 15th anniversary, the nonprofit hopes to expand its ministry, starting with its first trip to Asia.
Next month, CBC will send 14 missionaries to Hà Tĩnh, Vietnam, to serve with the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres. The trip was organized by missionary Marierose Hoang and her husband Lai Dang, who are close with the sisters in Hà Tĩnh. Accompanied by Dominican Father Vincent Thao Ngoc Dinh, priest in residence at Holy Martyrs of Vietnam Church in Arlington, the missionaries will serve at children’s homes and orphanages run by the sisters.
CBC is a nonprofit in the Arlington diocese that organizes short-term mission trips domestically and internationally for Catholic adults and their families. The concept originated with a group of college seniors at George Mason University in Fairfax in 2007. Father Jamie R. Workman, diocesan vicar general, had been a priest for a year when Jessica Aldrich approached him with several other graduating seniors. The seniors had enjoyed spring break mission trips organized by GMU’s Catholic Campus Ministry, and Aldrich had remembered that Father Workman was an alum.
“They came with a vision of wanting to establish an organization that would afford this opportunity to youths and young adults, to working Catholic adults and families,” Father Workman said.
Father Workman reached out to Bishop Paul S. Loverde for approval to form an organization to achieve this goal. A year and a half later, CBC was approved as a private nonprofit and had their first mission trip to Bánica in the Dominican Republic in 2010.
Volunteers ran the nonprofit for the first few years until Michelle Haworth arrived as the first executive director in 2015. She increased annual international mission trips from two to seven and organized CBC’s first domestic trips to Appalachia.
The goal of CBC is to support Catholic organizations and missions abroad, Haworth said. On trips, missionaries might teach English at a school, visit an orphanage or deliver food packages for Catholic missions. A diocesan priest accompanies each group of missionaries, who meet several times before the trip to pray and do local acts of service.
“When we prepare our missionaries, we prepare them spiritually, catechetically and practically,” Haworth said.
CBC’s mission is “to serve the corporal and spiritual works of mercy in a particular way to connect those working Catholic adults and families to that and allow them a spiritual formation and intellectual formation, so that they can grow in discipleship,” said Father Workman.
By the end of this year, CBC will have completed 46 domestic and international trips and formed more than 600 missionaries, as well as 400 missionaries for its one-day missions. Missionaries come from more than 40 diocesan parishes, ranging from teens to adults in their 70s.
This year, CBC collaborated with the diocesan Office of Youth, Campus and Young Adult Ministries to assist at diocesan WorkCamp work sites. With the help of contractors, missionaries spent four days putting the final touches on projects after WorkCamp ended. Carlos Maceo, a parishioner ofSt. Ann Church in Arlington, was one of the group leaders.
“We’re there to be Christ’s disciples. We’re there to be his hands and feet, and to put those nails into walls, to paint and to put down floors and railings and decks. But we always do it animated by the Holy Spirit. And I think that’s what makes (CBC) different from so many ministries,” Maceo said.
Next spring, Maceo will lead CBC’s first trip to El Salvador. As a native Spanish-speaker, he said, “It’s an opportunity to share my faith,” he said, “and my very limited talents with a community and just be able to convey my faith in a much more animated way.”
Patricia Martin, a parishioner of St. Ann, has been a CBC missionary for more than a decade. She attends at least one international trip a year, in addition to many one-day missions. She says that all of the trips, but particularly the trips to Peru, have been spiritually fruitful for her.
“We have a tendency to not realize how fortunate we are,” Martin said. “It really leaves an impression. They teach you by their actions and by the way they treat each other.”
Under the leadership of Father Joe Uhen, pastor of Santísimo Sacramento Parish and Mission Center in Piura, Peru, Martin and the other missionaries built houses, visited orphanages and assisted the mission center with various tasks. Martin then decided to make her missionary work a family endeavor.
“The second year after that visit, I brought my daughter with me, and she’s come every year since,” Martin said. “So, this has become a family thing that we very much enjoy.”
For those who want to serve but are apprehensive, Haworth said, “I’ll tell them, if God is calling you to this, if he’s putting it on your heart, you need to respond to it and answer that call, because there’s going to be something there specifically for you. He has something very intentional in mind for you.”
