Summer Blessings: The 2024 Shared Mission Trip

It was my pleasure and privilege to join the SNJM Shared Mission Trip to Wapato, Washington this summer. As the new Executive Director of Holy Names Educational Ministries, I knew it would be a wonderful way to experience some of the ways that the SNJM Charism is lived by our school communities through service-learning. I can report with joy and certainty that our Charism is thriving in our young people and their dedicated leaders, and it was especially meaningful to be with and watch the students interact with the Sisters and Associates who live and minister in the communities in which we served. 

Our service-learning group consisted of students and adults from Holy Names Academy (Seattle), St. Mary’s Academy (Portland), Academy of the Holy Names (Tampa), and St. Mary’s Academy (Winnipeg). We were blessed to have volunteers from Jonestown, Mississippi (another SNJM-sponsored ministry) as well as local students from Wapato High School join us. From these many locations, we converged on The Campbell Farm which is located on the Yakima Reservation in Washington. 

The Campbell Farm

The Campbell Farm is a remarkable community hub of services and resources. From feeding families home-made food delivered to their homes or given from vans to homeless persons to running summer camps for students to providing maternal health support, The Campbell Farm strives to meet the immediate needs of the community and plan for its long-range vitality with education programs. The dedicated staff at The Campbell Farm has the pulse of the needs of the community, helped plug our group into many powerful local service projects, and served as our home base as well as one of our service locations. 

From Monday through Thursday, each day brought our student and adult volunteers close to those in need from the community as well as the amazing people who work with and minister to them and illustrated the power of service-learning. The students were divided into groups and rotated through several activities.

• In the morning, a group always had chores around The Farm, such as pulling weeds, and all groups shared kitchen cleanup and serving meals.
• After breakfast, groups of students and volunteers traveled to various locations and worked in very hot weather packing food boxes, working in food banks, serving food, cleaning up trash, working in a community garden, or staying back on The Farm to lead crafts projects with the children from the community.
• In the middle of the week, in response to fires in the community in which many families lost everything, the whole group was mobilized to help with emergency food distribution.

By participating in these activities, students learned about and responded to the needs of others, and they rose to the challenge with grace and strength. 

Educational opportunities

The afternoons brought a different kind of learning—we learned about the remarkable people who have established programs that respond to other needs in the community. We toured the Yakama Cultural Museum and learned about preserving and celebrating Yakama culture. We toured a “Tiny Forest,” which is a labor of love and effort to return the land to its original features by planting native trees and plants. We were given a tour of a community radio station that operates to inform and support the large farmworker presence in the local and surrounding area. We learned about women’s health “deserts” and how the Birth Justice Center supports maternal health needs of women in and near Yakima using modern and indigenous knowledge.  

Highlights of the trip included visiting ministries begun by SNJM Sisters and meeting the Sister Foundresses. Sr. Mary Rita Rohde, snjm and the Staff at Nuestra Casa shared about its history and the programs that Nuestra Casa offers, such as Adult English classes, citizenship programs, and other workshops and programs that meet other needs in the mostly immigrant community. After the presentation, the students helped the adults in the ESL program practice their English and we shared a delicious home-cooked meal together. 

Another highlight of the week was Sr. Kathleen Ross, snjm sharing the story of Heritage University. Due to being mobilized to help with the fire survivors, the whole group was not able to tour Heritage University as planned, but Sr. Kathleen came to The Campbell Farm with hats and goodies for everyone and shared her journey of founding and being chosen to lead Heritage University. Sr. Mary Ellen Robinson, snjm is a whirlwind of activity, hosting guests in her “Marie Rose House” and being involved in many of the places where we served. We were joined by SNJM Associates at some of our gatherings, and we heard compelling stories from women who came to share their life stories with us. 

Communal reflection & prayer

In the evenings, we gathered for reflection and prayer. The students and adults were asked about what impacted them the most about the day, and how the SNJM Charism was alive in the work that they did.

These reflections were powerful and showed how much the students internalized the SNJM values of hospitality and outreach, especially to women and children.

For example, one student reflected on how powerful it was to serve food to people and then to see them eating it, recognizing how grateful she was to be in that position to help another. There were many moments such as these where our students and adults experienced both power in serving and a sense of being overwhelmed by the enormous need we saw. But all of us were deeply affected by the power of the human spirit to move forward in adversity, the importance of doing what you can where you are, as the Sisters and Associates in Yakima do so beautifully, and, of course, the resilience, strength, and beauty of the Yakima community. I am so grateful for this experience and so proud of our SNJM community spirit.