Spread the Love: Looking back on my mission trip
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Elyse Clayton
Breeze-Courier
You get two types of responses when you tell people you’re going on a mission trip.
With the first type, people will wish you luck and maybe offer to keep you in their prayers, giving you words of encouragement.
In the second type, people look at you with a bit of disgust, wondering why you have this “white savior complex,” and think you’re going to shove your religion down other people’s throats.
I received a bit of both, but thankfully mainly the former, before I went to spend a week serving at the Yankton Sioux Tribe’s Reservation in South Dakota.
I went with a group called Chi Alpha from my college town (Columbia, Missouri), and we stayed at the All Tribes Fellowship in Wagner. Cody (who runs the church) and All Tribes don’t have the manpower to do bigger projects, so that’s what they use teams like ours for.
While we did a lot of work serving the community, like painting a community center, organizing a clothing drive, cleaning up a construction site, picking up trash from yards, and working a lot with the youth, my main take away from the trip was what our generation has been called to do and why we have to do it.
When we went on a tour of the reservation on Tuesday, we heard a lot of history from Cody that he has gathered from interviews and independent research. Hearing how this community has been treated, especially by the US government and the Catholic church, and seeing the impact of broken promises and the continued mistreatment left me and the whole group feeling angry. Angry at the government. Angry at the church. Angry at ourselves, even, despite never having been involved in the abuse of the tribe.
We saw the Catholic boarding school where so many children were beaten, abused, mistreated, even killed. We saw the graffitied, unmanaged, four-person government houses where families of 12 were living. We talked about the mass graves being found all over Canada at other boarding schools and the still unsearched schools in the US. We talked about how many of the tribe’s members don’t know their native languages because it was illegal to speak them in the US until 1990.
But we also saw the passion of the people living in these communities. The youth we worked with all had such big hearts to worship and praise and just love. They were eager to get to know us and to just share conversation and song. There was at least one high school or junior high student, usually two or three, hanging out at the church with us pretty much every night until midnight or later.
This trip wasn’t about spreading Christianity. It wasn’t about “converting” or “saving” anyone. It was about acknowledging the wrongs committed against this community and others like it. It was about showing them that the One True God we serve as Christians is not at all like what they were taught. He is love and peace, not anger and destruction. They’ve been taught, both by personal experience and by stories, to fear Christians. People have done and still do horrible things in the name of God — but that does not mean God condones those actions.
This week was just showing people the true nature of God and Christians, even if that meant not talking about God. By doing good things through All Tribes Fellowship, we can slowly redefine the word “Christian” in the minds of people who may be scarred by the church.
It sucks that the tribe’s history looks the way it does. I know that doesn’t sound very professional, but I’m not sure what else to say. It just sucks. It sucks that the church and the government left such a mess and did so much damage. It sucks that people are still feeling the pain and facing the repercussions of past actions. It sucks that people are still spreading hate and embracing ignorance.
And it sucks that we — our generation — are the ones who have to deal with it. But if we don’t start doing something, anything, then nothing will ever get done.
So why not start by just showing up for people — just showing up and spreading love. Why not start by cleaning out a community center, by painting, by worshipping, by organizing clothing donations, by being willing and ready to serve in whatever capacity necessary.
People deserve love. That’s what this trip, and all mission trips, are about. That’s what we’ve been called to do.
And you don’t have to be on a mission trip to answer that call. Missions at home are just as important as missions away, and it’s part of daily life — not just something you commit to for a week.
So go out and love. Just by being a genuinely joyful and helpful person, just by being servant-minded, you can bring people to God. If people see real peace and love in you, they’ll wonder what’s up. They’ll wonder what’s different about you. And maybe they’ll ask a question. So through your acts of kindness, your heart to serve, you can bring glory to God.
Even without the goal of saving people, without a Christian mindset, people still deserve love. And you never know what a smile, a kind word, a helping hand could mean to someone.
As Paul wrote, “Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10). Love is the greatest thing we are called to do.
There’s so much more I could and should say about this trip — but every story has it’s limit. Reach out to me at eclayton@breezecourier.com for more information or just a conversation.
