Ten ACS high school students and three chaperones spent April 22-26 serving on a missions trip in New York City and surrounding towns giving aid and comfort and sharing the love of Christ with people struggling with addictions and homelessness. The trip was organized by the Center for Student Missions (CSM).
On the first day of outreach, the ACS missions team spent the morning at the Recovery House of Worship, helping prepare and serve lunch and participating in a worship service. 12th graders Solomon Griffith and Caraline Winkel led devotions and 12th grader Lola Oguntuase sang a praise and worship song. In the afternoon, CSM leaders took the team on a prayer tour to eight different locations in New York City, including Grand Central Station, the 9/11 Memorial, and Bryant Park. At each location, the team gathered to pray for the urgent issues of human trafficking, homelessness, and drug addiction. In Bryant Park, the students also approached various individuals and interviewed them about the homelessness issue and possible solutions to it.
On the following day, April 24, spent the morning in Brooklyn volunteering with the New York City Relief Bus that was parked in Chelsea Park. The bus is an outreach ministry of a North Jersey church. The students worked in the kitchen, served soup, and gave out care packages to the homeless in the park. The students also spent time sitting and talking with various homeless people.
“Our team was greatly impacted by the time we spent in ministry to the homeless,” said Caitie Lee, an ACS faculty member and trip chaperone. “The conversations that we had with the people experiencing homelessness brought us out of our comfort zone and challenged us to look at them in a new way — that they are God’s children and their hearts matter and their lives matter. It was a privilege to listen to them share what was on their hearts.”
Later that day, the team volunteered at a school in Harlem, doing work projects for the director and tutors of an after-school program called Operation Exodus. The team’s service included painting an office, organized closets, and moving boxes. The team continued doing work projects on their final day of service, doing painting, gardening, and other tasks at the Maspeth Bible Church in Maspeth, New York.
The 10 students who served on the trip were Hualin “Max” Bai, Rudy Dalinger, Solomon Griffith, Renyun “Roy” Hou, Zengzheng “Constantine” Jiang, Francis Mensah, Joshua Mizrahi, Lola Oguntuase, Caraline Winkel, and Shuwei “Gary” Zhang. In addition to Mrs. Lee, the other chaperones were her husband, Casey Lee, and Sarah Getty.