New York City holds a different place in the hearts of this year’s winter break mission trip participants, after having seen the city in a different light than most tourists..
Coby Davis, assistant professor of education, along with 15 students and 2 alumni traveled to The Big Apple with a unified purpose: service before self.
In a city, or shall I say, City, with so many distractions and tourists traps, it is rather easy to overlook the needs of the people who live there.
The majority of our time was spent at P.S. 179, a school in the Bronx, one of the five boroughs of New York City. This school serves pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.
I had the opportunity to be a teacher’s aide in a third-grade class. My goal was to foster good relationships with my students, in hopes that they would feel comfortable talking and reading to me and asking for help as needed.
Although I have been on several other mission trips to Mexico, Honduras and Africa, this was my first chance to work with this age group. Was it challenging and frustrating at times? Certainly. Would I go back tomorrow? Absolutely.
Another aspect of our trip included service projects at both World Vision and Momentum. World Vision is an international evangelical relief and development organization whose primary objective is to “promote human transformation, seek justice and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God.”
This organization receives school supplies, clothing, food commodities and medicine from vendors across the world that seek to engage in the act of giving to the less fortunate. During our time at World Vision, we helped sort through incoming items and re-stock the shelves of the warehouse, which is frequented by schoolteachers and nonprofit organization leaders from the Bronx.
Collaborating with Momentum was also a unique experience. The Momentum “Project” is dedicated to feeding disenfranchised New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. Today, Momentum has grown into one of New York City’s largest HIV/AIDS organizations providing hot meals, pantry bags, and a wide array of life saving support services at nine locations in four boroughs of the city.
Working at Momentum was one of the highlights of my trip, as I was able to converse with several different men struggling through this degenerative illness. Joy and contentment radiated in many of these men, who openly shared with me a part of their lives.
I could go more in-depth about this trip, the experiences I had, relationships formed, etc., but I know attention spans these days are short-lived. If you have any interest in this trip or questions I did not answer, I’d be more than happy to talk to you. Besides, who wouldn’t want to serve in New York, the “concrete jungle where dreams are made of?”