‘Allowing the spirit to enter’ is how extended service trips succeed
By Buff Lindau
Photo by Brian MacDonald
“Our programs are most successful when students open themselves to serving others and let God into their lives,” said MOVE director Heidi Ludewig St. Peter ’96. Extended service for a week or more at an off-campus site is one of the most involving programs that MOVE, the Edmundite Campus Ministry service program, offers.
This year the number of students applying to participate in a spring break week of service doubled over the previous year. Those selected went to service sites where Saint Michael’s volunteers had worked before. “Long-term partnerships are the key,” said St. Peter, “because they appreciate our students’ commitment and they help with logistics.”
The college has been sending students to the House of Bread in Hartford for a decade now. “Saint Michael’s students are very much open to the experience,” said Sebastian Kolodziej, chef and manager of the soup kitchen and shelter. “Our clients are really down and out, but even with this dichotomy, the students interact with them,” Kolodziej said. “They give the students words of wisdom; it’s a wonderful mixture of two people sharing a brief moment—it enlightens both of their hearts.”
These relationships are cemented when the work addresses issues that can be continued through a local partnership after the week is done. This year students who went to Best Friends Animal Shelter in Kanab, Utah, the nation’s largest no-kill sanctuary for homeless animals, came back very engaged in animal protection work. Their Cause for Paws MOVE team now serves the local Humane Society and greyhound rescue programs weekly.
Other students have become favorite volunteers at the Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas. A relationship with 80-year old Maxine Johnston, who helped make it a preserve, keeps students returning to that challenging site where they do back-breaking work to preserve and protect an important natural environment.
Successful engagement comes from putting students in a new place and making them uncomfortable. Then they become open to the needs of others, St. Peter said. “We put the students in the position and hope they’ll be open to God’s presence working.” At first it’s uncomfortable in a shelter or soup kitchen, where clients have been through a lot, but once the ice is broken, people connect through their shared humanity, as well as their differences. “Then the work is just done,” she said. “You try to facilitate openness in students, because it rarely disappoints—which makes my job pretty darn good.”
