“You won’t go to India to do something an Indian cannot do,” the Rev. Thomas John told me. He was the site coordinator for the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program in India, and I was a college senior, interviewing to serve as a YAV on the other side of the globe. I don’t think I had any delusions of single-handedly transforming the world, but I was surely guided by a desire to help, to contribute and to be of service. That was in 2002. Today I serve as site coordinator for the YAV program in Colombia, and I encounter those same motivations again and again in current applicants.
저와 아내 이혜영이 한국에서 사역을 시작한 직후, 카유가 시라큐스Cayuga-Syracuse 노회 장로인 린다 러셀이 그녀의 노회가 10년 넘게 한국과의 파트너십 팀을 유지하고 있다고 말하였습니다. 린다는 이 팀이 미국장로교 청년 봉사단 (YAV) 프로그램의 현장 코디네이터로서 우리의 사업에 관심이 있을 것이라고 제안했습니다. 우리는 앞으로 이어질 상호교류에 대한 우리의 흥분을 느꼈습니다. 그것은 Cayuga-Syracuse 노회와 오래되고 유익한 협력 관계를 유지하기 시작했습니다.
Soon after my wife, Hyeyoung Lee, and I began our mission co-worker assignment in South Korea, a Presbyterian elder from Cayuga-Syracuse Presbytery, Linda Russell, called to tell us that her presbytery has been maintaining a Korean Partnership Team for over a decade. Linda suggested this team might be interested in our work as site coordinators of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program. We felt our excitement for the work ahead reciprocated. That began what has been a long and fruitful partnership with Cayuga-Syracuse Presbytery.
Kristen Young will never forget the face of Diana. The expectant teen was scared and refused to smile when she came to the shelter in Peru where Young worked last year as a Presbyterian Young Adult Volunteer (YAV). As the days passed, Diana felt the warm embrace of the center staff and her somber countenance began to brighten. Young was especially moved when she saw the delight Diana took in her newborn son.
More than 1,000 young people from around the world recently gathered at the United Nations to attend the 2018 Winter Youth Assembly. Simon Doong, a Young Adult Volunteer with the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations, was among the attendees.
It has been 10 years since I stepped off an Ethiopian Airlines flight and placed my feet on Kenyan soil. However, the impact of my Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) experience has left me feeling, at times, as if it were yesterday. I don’t remember how I came to know about the YAV program. I vaguely remember filling out an application. What I do remember is my interview with Phyllis Byrd and my excitement about the possibility of serving for a year on the continent of Africa. I vividly remember her stern and stoic demeanor and my desire to convey how much I needed this experience.
Work is an important part of vocation, but an equally important part of living out my calling is my new home. My current home as a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) is an intentional Christian community in Boston, where my fellow YAVs and I seek to build faithful relationships with one another, with our neighbors and with God. My year of service is teaching me that “being in mission” is a way of living that starts in the place where I eat, rest, reflect and pray with those closest to me.
For as long as I can remember, every prayer has begun and ended with the sign of the cross. The sign of the cross has been the catalyst for, and the conclusion to, every Mass I have ever attended. The sign of the cross is indicative of my religious and Latina identity.
I still remember the first words from the first church leader I met as I first arrived in Manila: “You are welcome here, but
you are not needed here.” Those words, spo0ken with wisdom and love almost two decades ago, would shape the course of my time as a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) in the Philippines. I didn’t know it then, but that same sentiment shaped the YAV program at its inception. And it continues to guide our vision for the program as volunteers serve around the world and witness the holy ways the Spirit is leading them.
When Don Stribling looks at the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program, he sees an experience that challenges the hyper individualism that pervades much of today’s religious practice.
