Recently, I spent a week at
Santisimo Sacramento, a parish located in an impoverished
section of Piura, Peru, about 600 miles north of Lima. I was
there with a group of 18 other Catholic adults as part of a
mission trip with Commissioned by
Christ (CBC), a local organization that plans short-term
Catholic mission trips for working adults and families.
During the trip, I learned many lessons while working with
the other missionaries to serve the local community. I
learned about poverty and gratitude by distributing food and
clothing to nearby villages. By teaching English and vacation
Bible school to Peruvian children, I learned how humbling
language barriers can be and how children everywhere crave
attention in the same ways. By meeting families and sitting
with children at the nightly Spanish Masses, I learned
relationships can start simply with a smile and a kiss on the
cheek. And while helping to build houses with my fellow
missionaries, I learned the importance of teamwork and, more
practically, exactly how to build a house out of bamboo.
Through it all, I learned about hospitality as all of us were
welcomed into a friendship with the people of Piura, who took
us into their lives with open arms and taught us the
importance of family and faith.
The trip was organized according to the vision of Jessica
Berrada, a parishioner of St. Charles Borromeo Church in
Arlington, who founded CBC in 2007 with her friends Ryan
Woodard and Joseph Coyne. At the time, Berrada was a senior
at George Mason University in Fairfax, trying to figure out a
way to dedicate herself to mission work while also pursuing a
career.
CBC gives a solution to that problem by short-term mission
trips abroad and around the United States, giving working
adults and families an opportunity to experience the mission
life in a Catholic setting without sacrificing their
responsibilities at home or in the workplace.
Today, Berrada is president and CEO of CBC, with Woodard
working as chief of finance and operations, and Coyne as
chief of information technology. The organization was
incorporated in 2008 and has held nonprofit status since
2009.
In July 2010, the organization took its first group of
missionaries to Bánica in the Dominican Republic.
Since then, it has taken more than 80 people on four more
trips locally to Floyd, Va., and Washington and
internationally to Bánica and Piura.
The organization’s staff has grown from three to 12, with
more people involved on the board of directors and the board
of advisers. Through all the growth, Berrada says CBC’s
mission has remained the same.
“My main objective is to bring my fellow Catholics into a
deeper relationship with their faith, with Christ and with
the mission life of the church,” she said.
Berrada believes mission trips are valuable because they
allow Catholics to take time away from their regular routine
and immerse themselves in service.
“We can always send money and show our support in many ways,
but being physically present and sharing our talents and
spending the time with other people is a way to serve like no
other way,” she said. “It’s important because it allows us to
take time out of our busy lives to focus on Christ, focus on
friendships and relationships, and have a time to put Christ
first while serving others.”
Those rewards certainly have helped Berrada grow in her faith
over the years. So far, she has attended every mission trip
but one.
“I definitely feel with every trip that I deepen my faith and
come back to a basic understanding of what is important in
life,” she said. “This renews me in a way that my normal
everyday life just can’t with all of its work and
responsibilities and obligations. Each trip is a new and
different experience that God has blessed me with.”
St. Charles parishioner Maureen Rohn felt similarly after
this month’s mission trip, her third with CBC. Previously,
she traveled to Bánica in 2010 and Piura in 2011. For
this trip, she was one of two leaders in charge of planning
and organizing group activities.
“I felt very strongly that I wanted to be able to give people
the experience I had on both trips, which were in different
ways very transformative,” she said. “I felt like both trips
had been exactly what I needed at exactly that time in my
life, that I was put on the trips for a reason and that they
helped pull me through some difficult times and pull me
closer to my faith.”
For her, the most rewarding part was returning to Piura and
seeing some of the people she had met previously, especially
the family she adopted through Santisimo Sacramento’s
family-to-family sponsorship program. They came to welcome
her at the Piura airport.
“The first time I saw them (at the airport), I just burst
into tears,” she said. “You always hear God loves you no
matter what and you are loved just because you exist and
that’s a hard thing to understand. The lesson of Jesus just
loving everyone, my family was really able to show me that
and I felt completely unworthy of them. They were there for
me just because I am a person in their life and they were
supporting me, and it was one of the most beautiful examples
of God’s love being acted out in real life.”
Rohn believes mission trips are important because they enable
people to see how much they can learn and grow by serving
others.
“I think that often in giving of yourself, you receive more
from other people and it’s a really important way to share
the love of Christ,” she said. “It’s just a circle that keeps
going. You sign up for a trip because you want to give, and
you give and you give and then you get that back three-fold.”
St. Charles parishioner Julie Erhardt said she went on the
trip because she wanted to spend time with people living in
poverty, to see for herself what their lives were like and
what she could do to help. What surprised her was how much
more she was given than she could give.
“You think you’re going there to give and that predominately,
you will be giving,” she said. “Actually when you look at it,
the opportunity to learn from other people there, to receive
their gratitude and have time to discuss and pray with the
fellow missionaries, I think I ended up learning more and
having more opportunities to think about things and increase
my perspective on things above and beyond what I was
expecting.”
She was inspired, she said, by how the Peruvians center their
lives around faith and family.
“If you don’t have a lot, it’s harder to forget that your
faith should be the center of (your life),” Erhardt said. “We
have a lot more distractiions, a lot of things that would
imply what we have is not really thanks to our faith. With
those people (in Piura), they have a cleaner slate. While
they do without some of the basics of life that we have, I
think one thing that has been given to them is a real clear
compass for where the faith is and the priority it should
have.”
Another St. Charles parishioner, Josh Goldman, said he had
been thinking about taking a mission trip for a long time. He
was inspired after hearing about similar trips taken by his
father and sister. His favorite part of the trip was helping
to distribute clothing in one of the village chapels.
“That was really the first time I experienced the poverty
there, but also the first time I experienced the real faith
the people there have,” he said. “People were lined up, but
they were all very calm and grateful. Nobody tried to take
more clothes than we said they could take.”
Returning from the trip, he said he has a deeper
understanding of service.
“This has changed my perspective about the need for service,
and given me the realization that you can’t help every single
person, but that’s not often the point. The point is to give
what you can to the people you give it to and spread the
message for the service while you do it.”
That renewed commitment to faith and service is something
Berrada hopes for all of the people who go on the trips.
“It’s important to take time out to really serve and
strengthen that relationship with Christ and with our faith,”
she said. “Everybody has the capacity for it, but it’s being
able to take the time out to focus on it that a lot of people
are missing.”
Berrada is already in the midst of planning next year’s
trips. In February, CBC missionaries will travel to Jamaica.
Next summer, they will return to Piura and Bánica.
“I would encourage anybody who is on the fence about mission
work to at least give it a try,” she said. “At least try to
step out of the boat, so to speak, and give God the
opportunity to work in their lives. Mission work is really a
calling of the Holy Spirit, and no matter which way you
answer that, you’re going to receive so many graces from that
that you would not even imagine.”
(Click here for more about Santisimo Sacramento Parish.)
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