The following story first appeared in the Autumn 2005 Glenmary Challenge.
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¡Sí Se Puede! No Problem!
This slogan captured the can-do spirit of the young people from ‘twinned’ parishes in Michigan and Mississippi who joined each other for a mission trip to the Glenmary Farm.
By Margaret Gabriel

Working Together: Jaime Hernandez (Eupora, Miss.) joins Brian Urbanovich (left, Jersey City, N.J.), Katherine Kummeth and Michelle Leppel (both from Midland, Mich.) to sort donated items for The Something Else Shoppe in Vanceburg, Ky. Volunteer director Joe Grosek is on the right.

The higher the sun rose in the sky and the hotter it got, the quieter the workers became—as if talking and joking would take too much of the energy needed for weeding between the rows of peppers, tomatoes, corn, beans and onions in the good-sized “kitchen garden” at the Glenmary Farm. As the weeders finished, they knocked the dirt from their hands, dumped the last wheelbarrow of weeds in the large pile and said, “Sí se puede!” (“We are able!”).

This was the phrase the kids from the Glenmary mission in Eupora, Miss., used as a rallying cry—and they shared it with the youth from their “twinned” parish in Midland, Mich. The groups were participating in a joint mission trip to the Glenmary Farm in Vanceburg, Ky.

Momentum for the trip began in October 2004 when Sister Alies Thérèse, pastoral coordinator of Glenmary’s missions in Ackerman and Eupora, Miss., visited these missions’ adopting parish, Blessed Sacrament in Midland, Mich. Sister Alies and the Michigan youth ministers discussed a way for the folks from their respective parishes to work together towards, what she calls, “a mission mentality.”

“When we live in the missions, we can begin thinking that people have to be helping us and doing for us all the time,” Sister Alies says. “But all Christians are called to be missionaries, not just people in big parishes.”

Sister Alies suggested that, in an effort to live up to their baptismal call, youth from the Michigan and Mississippi parishes could gather at the Glenmary Farm, a place where young people (and some not-so-young people!) come for an experience of service, mission education, prayer and reflection shared in an environment of simple living.

Since Blessed Sacrament’s youth ministry collaborates with nearby St. Brigid and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary parishes, their youth would also be included in the mission trip.

But when Sister Alies returned home to Mississippi and began planning for the trip with the youth in her area, one obstacle after another seemed to stand in the way. “At times we didn’t think we could make this trip happen,” she says. “But every time something went right or we made something happen, we said, ‘Sí se puede!’”

The literal translation of the phrase is “we are able,” but Sister Alies says that Eupora youth began to use the phrase to mean “no problem.” And the trip was finally made.

The four young people Sister Alies brought to Vanceburg, all of them Hispanic, and the 10 youth and four chaperones from Michigan blended with the other groups visiting the Farm the week of June 18: students from St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago and St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City, N.J. The young people, over 40 in all, were divided into six groups that every day went to work sites that included a home construction site, the local nursing home and a day program for the developmentally disabled.

“One thing that really changed me was the nursing home,” says Jaime Hernandez, a junior from Eupora High School. “I saw a sign outside some of the rooms that said, ‘Don’t walk by, come in and say hello.’ And I did. People were very happy to see me and I was surprised that a little thing like saying ‘hi’ could mean everything in the world to them.”

In the coming year, Paula Dachsteiner, youth minister at St. Brigid in Midland, hopes to involve those who went to the Farm from Michigan in retreats in which they can give witness to their experiences working with their fellow volunteers from Mississippi.

“And we’d like for them to make a display of pictures that they’ve taken and quotes about the things they’ve learned,” she says. “Hopefully this trip will be a stepping stone for them to participate in other mission trips.”

Chrissy Fritsch, a junior at Midland High School and a member of St. Brigid Parish, calls her week at the Farm “the best week I’ve ever had. It was fun to work together and to meet people from other places.”

Chrissy was assigned to a group with Chito Ajú, from Eupora, and was often called on to translate English to Spanish and Spanish to English, using the Spanish she has studied in school. “And I liked hanging out with Magda [Chito’s sister]. We would sit and talk and found out that we had a lot in common.”

As they got to know each other better, the students from the twinned parishes found they had many more things in common than divided them. And a desire to be of service to others was one of them.

“In 1948 Father Bishop [Glenmary’s founder] wrote about the importance of changing entrenched thinking,” Sister Alies says. “The Farm really gives people [like the youth from Michigan and Mississippi] the opportunity to think in a different way!”