CHARLOTTE — More than 50 young people at St. Peter Church in Charlotte took part in "Summer Teen Service Week" July 18-22, helping more than 1,000 people in various locations across the city.
The fourth annual service project enabled the teens at the Jesuit-run parish to put their faith into action and give back to the community, serving others with hard work, compassion and mercy while also practicing Ignatian spirituality. Through the people they served, fellow youth and their own inner movement towards God, the teens were able to grow in their relationship with Christ.
Each day began with prayer and discussion before the teens set off for service projects at Holy Angels, Alexander Youth Network and the soup kitchen at Ascension Lutheran Church, among other locations.
They cleaned up a creek and built a wheelchair ramp for a woman in need, built "talking lap desks" for schoolchildren in South Sudan, and played bingo with residents at McCreesh Place.
They also heard from guest speakers Patricia Shafer and Jordan Koletic of Mothering Across Continents, Suzanne Wittebort and Jean Miller of Druid Hills Academy, Dave Zablotny of the Kino Border Initiative, Julie Glaser of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and Allain Andry of the parish's Ignatian Spirituality team.
On the final day, they ate a humble "Rations of Hope" lunch of beans, rice and bread – a learning experience in memory of the refugee camp experiences of the former "Lost Boys" of Sudan.
"Teen Service Week really helped me see what some people have to live like, and I felt God telling me through all of the people that I worked with that I should start doing something to not only help them but to show them God's light, just like they showed me. I will definitely be coming back next summer for more," said participant Sarah Porter Kuhn.
