Central Texas Conference Youth in Mission: Christine Coleman

Each summer, we send students to serve in various places as construction missionaries. This summer, 27 students and adults to serve in Caldwell, Texas with CTCYM.

CTCYM, or Central Texas Conference Youth in Missions, seeks to place students where justice, kindness and grace are needed. On the first night work team students and adults are divided up into teams with students and adults from the other churches, (we had 14 teams from 7 churches this past year!)

From a logistics stand point, it may seem to be a bit of an organizational nightmare - 80-120 people sleeping in a single church, needing showers daily, sending teams out to complete painting, wheel chair ramps, and more.

But from a relational standpoint, it is amazing. The students rarely complain. They experience the heat, the humidity, the too-loud ice machine drop every hour nightly, and wake up each morning with smiles, ready to serve. And they (or a parent, or close friend) paid to do this. We had 11 adults who were running around getting food, supplies and getting tools so to that the teams could do the work, and they were always kind, always helpful and always encouraging.

Part of CTCYM is building relationships with other churches and with the clients, which is what stands out about this trip over others: it’s not just building the immediate church body, but the larger church body with other churches who serve and other people people served. It creates a connectional ministry that is bigger than you can imagine.