A memorable spring break:
Creighton students spend week in Indiana serving others
Alyssa Grengs, left, and Anna Peterson play a card game with children at Miracle Place, an Indianapolis center operated by Providence sisters that helps at-risk students, senior citizens and Hispanic people. Grengs and Peterson are Creighton University students who spent their spring break in Indianapolis working to make a difference in the lives of others. (Photos by John Shaughnessy)
By John Shaughnessy
Imagine that you’re a college student hoping for a memorable spring break that will leave you smiling. Now imagine that you are given two choices to make that experience possible:
A. You get to relax on a sandy beach in Florida or Mexico while the sun beams down on you from a cloudless blue sky on a day when the temperatures are in the mid-80s.
B. You get to clean up trash and tree limbs at a park near the White River in Indianapolis on a dreary, gray day marked first by driving rain then freezing rain as temperatures teeter around 30 degrees.
Or consider this set of choices:
A. You don’t have enough money to head south for fun and warmth, so you return to your home where you sleep late every day and your parents spoil you all week by making your favorite meals and taking you to your favorite restaurants.
B. You spend the week in an Indianapolis home where 12 people share one bedroom and you are each given $5 total each day for your three meals.
And here’s one last set of choices:
A. You spend your nights, surrounded by a close group of friends, hoping to find the ultimate good time.
B. You spend your nights, surrounded by people you have just met, talking about your life, your relationship with God and your struggles with your faith.
Realistically, many college students would choose “A” every time from those choices. And who could fault them?
Still, for Alyssa Grengs and 18 other college students from the Jesuit-run Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., the choice of “B” in all those situations helped to make for a positive and memorable spring break in Indianapolis on March 3-8.
For those six days, the 19 students worked at a food bank, served food to the homeless, cleaned up the banks of a river and worked with “at-risk” children. They began each morning with prayer, and they ended each day reflecting on their faith and their experiences.
“It’s been amazing. We’re all smiling,” said Grengs, 19, a sophomore. “I didn’t know anyone when I came on this trip. I wasn’t friends with anyone. Now I feel I’ve been friends with these people all my life. I talk with them. I laugh with them. I feel I’ve made this huge human connection.”
Making that human connection was the goal of the alternative spring break experience that was co-sponsored by the Indianapolis Peace Institute, the Indianapolis Peace Center and Providence Volunteer Ministry, which is celebrating 20 years as a ministry of the Sisters of Providence of Saint-Mary-of-the Woods.
“This is the first time this group has come to Indianapolis,” said Julie Szolek-Van Valkenburgh, the director of Providence Volunteer Ministry. “We set it up for them as a week of peace and justice through service to others.”
So the Creighton students, who each paid $180 for the trip, worked at Gleaners Food Bank, where they placed food into backpacks for school children.
They put on boots and endured the cold, rain and mud as they cleaned up the banks of the White River with the Friends of White River-Holliday Park.
They visited the Indianapolis Peace Center and learned skills in conflict resolution and peacekeeping—and then shared those skills with children from some of the toughest areas of Indianapolis.
They served meals to the homeless at the Cathedral Kitchen, a ministry of SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral Parish. They also helped at Miracle Place, a center operated by Providence sisters in Indianapolis that helps inner-city children, cares for senior citizens and teaches English to Hispanic adults.
The students did it all with an attitude of connecting with the people they helped, believing their efforts were helping them, too. Their attitude reflected the message on the souvenir T-shirt they each received at the beginning of the trip, a message that quoted an Aboriginal woman named Lilla Watson:
“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
“The trip just renews everyone’s faith in humankind,” said Amanda Grade, 19, a sophomore. “There are still good people out there, and they want to help.”
If the days were dedicated to making a deeper connection with people, the evenings also created that same bond among the students on the trip.
“Out of this group, we have atheists, agnostics, devout Catholics, Christians of all denominations and people from all over,” said Andy Bauer, 20, a sophomore. “When people go on these trips, you know you’re going to be challenged. The most devout Catholic is working alongside the person who is cursing God. You talk about your life, God, your struggles with your faith. It’s very passionate and intimate-looking at your faith.”
The week also offered an insight into many young people today, said Jesuit Father Paul Coelho, an instructor at Creighton who accompanied the students on the trip.
“Young people continue to have wonderful ideas and ideals,” Father Coelho said. “They have a vision of their future. They believe they can make a difference.”
That belief is at their core even as they struggle with their doubts.
“We had a send-off Mass when we began this trip,” Grengs said. “A speaker at the Mass said we should look for God on this trip. I’ve seen God in so many places. Faith sometimes is hard, and you don’t know all the answers. This service trip has maybe not given me all the answers, but it’s led me to believe there is an answer. It’s helped me learn to keep loving.” †
