News - March 2017 RSS Feed

After ending a long week of classes, late night studying, and midterms, twenty-three other seminarians from the Mount and I found ourselves on a bus towards Philadelphia International Airport. We checked in our bags, stood in line for TSA, and hopped on a plane headed for Italy. Once on the plane, it finally hit me, "When this plane lands, I will be in Rome." I was beyond excited to see all the beautiful sites, to taste the delicious food, and to see my brother seminarians at the North American College. 

Friday was our last day at Mustard Seed and the day was divided into two parts. The first consisted of completing our work project, which entailed erecting a 38-foot-long wall from scratch. We were uncertain if we would manage to complete the wall, for we had but four hours to build, but we continued with high hopes. 

As Thursday rolled around, our group began to feel locked-in to a rather rigid schedule. Five-thirty wake-up, a cold shower, Morning Prayer, Mass, a quick breakfast, then hard work all day long. Even after Wednesday’s outing, the whole procedure was beginning to weigh down on our bodies. Loving these kids felt like sunshine and daisies when we were alert, energized and fully able to give ourselves over to the experience.

On Wednesday, our team took a day off of our work at Blessed Assurance to visit another of Mustard Seed’s communities: Jacob’s Ladder. Jacob’s Ladder is a massive facility that houses many adults with special needs, providing them with a safe and happy environment in which they can work and find a home. Upon arrival, we were shocked at the sheer size of the place, which is divided into several residential “villages,” a full-scale chapel, a smaller Adoration room, work facilities, administrative buildings and many acres of farmland.

Yesterday, our trip took a turn for the physical. Up until now, our efforts largely focused on directly caring for the children at Blessed Assurance. Today, however, half of us took a break from that ministry to break ground on our week-long construction project: an irrigation trench, built to prevent the heavy summer rains from flooding the compound. While our team labored on the trench, the other group would continue to take care of the children all day, feeding, playing and praying with them.

After a long, tiring day of trench-digging, on Tuesday we turned our attention once more to serving the many children housed at Blessed Assurance. Our assignment was simple: spend the entire day with the children, living their schedule alongside them from breakfast until dinner. At first, I expected the day to be a relief from the exhaustion of manual labor. On the contrary, the day wore me out just as much, albeit in a very different way.

After an easy first day of settling into our new home at Blessed Assurance, yesterday reminded us that we are indeed on a mission, not a vacation. We awoke at sunrise to roosters crowing and a faint light poking through our dorm ceiling. Cold showers seized our weary attentions from the humdrum of morning routine, but serenity returned with group morning prayer on the breezy balcony.

My alarm sounded: 4 o’clock in the morning. I rolled out of bed, grabbed my bag and hopped on the bus with 18 other seminarians and two priests. By noon, our plane kissed the runway as we landed in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The chilly Washington air evaporated from memory as we stepped into the Caribbean climate. After some finagling through customs, we finally found our bus.