Last week, Monday, July 6 to Friday, July 10 was Mercy Week. Mercy Week is a local, miniature, mission trip experience for middle and high school students of St. Charles Borromeo school and parish. Mercy Week gives the teens a small experience of what a mission trip is like without the bigger cost and commitment. This year, for Mercy Week our theme was "Be Merciful as Your Heavenly Father is Merciful," -Pope Francis' call to a Year of Mercy. The Year of Mercy begins December 8th. On Monday, we talked about why mercy was so important and why that was our theme for the week. The example I used was to imagine if they decided to play a sport they had never played before and didn't know any of the rules or how to play, but instead of first starting out with practice, they jumped right into the first game. Imagine how that would go...probably not very well.
I told them to consider Mercy Week and the 5 months proceeding the actual beginning of the Year of Mercy as our practice. It is our time to learn what mercy is and to identify whether we are merciful people or not and how we can improve on being more merciful. So instead of just starting with the "game" on December 8th and never having any practices or learning anything about the game, we can use this time to really figure out what we need to do to be "merciful as our Heavenly Father." Instead of getting halfway through the Year of Mercy and just beginning to figure it out. Starting now allows us to make a game plan about how we will spend our Year of Mercy, so that we get the most out of those 365 days.
Our schedule for the week was as follows:
9:00 Daily Mass
10:00-3:00 Service at Various Locations
3:00-3:30 Snack/Free Time
3:30-4:15 Prayer Experience/Free Time
Each day's schedule varied depending on the location, with some days ending earlier than others.
Monday and Thursday: we served the St. Charles community by helping set up classrooms for the upcoming school year, washing chairs and tables in Borromeo Hall and in the Lunchroom, and getting the lunchroom set up for the first day of class, we wiped down the pews with oil, we also pulled weeds on the playground and picked up sticks outside the gym. These days we had a good amount of down time and were able to enjoy recess in the gym.
Tuesday: Due to the bad weather that had come in Monday night, we made a last minute change and visited St. Charles Parishioners in the Nursing Homes around town. Personally, this was my favorite day. We broke up into three different groups and visited several nursing homes. We were able to talk to them about their families and what their lives were like at the age of the teens visiting them. We heard lots of great stories about family, love and war. We were able to talk to one couple who had been married for a long time and get their secrets to a long happy marriage! We also heard great testimonies about their Catholic faith.
Wednesday and Friday: We served at the Sisters of St. Francis Warehouse in Independence, Missouri. The Sisters of St. Francis collect items from local hospitals and clothing donations that are shipped overseas to poorer countries that are trying to establish hospitals. They ship things like hospital beds, mattresses, all different kinds of medial supplies, clothing and more. On Wednesday, we folded sheets, blankets and hospital gowns and got them ready to be shipped to the various locations. On Friday, we washed over 100 barrels that are used to place the blankets, sheets and clothes in to ship overseas. These were probably the hardest days because we were not able to see a direct connection to the service that we were doing. But it was also really great to know that we are serving those in third world countries. I tried to remind the teens that when they receive these packages, it will be like Christmas morning for them!
Friday night, to end our week of service, we went to the Royal's Home Game against the Toronto Blue Jays. We arrived to the game just before the big storm hit, luckily we were in the "nosebleed section" which meant we were in some of the only covered seats throughout the storm. We watched some crazy clouds move across the stadium! Though we had a two hour delay, we still had a lot of fun hanging out and watching the storm roll in while eating our Dollar Hot dogs and Dippin' Dots in miniature Royals Helmets. It was a very exciting game and Salvador Perez hit a home run into the bullpen. The game ended just after midnight with a WIN and a great Fireworks display!
