Sheldon, Iowa — We’ve heard of so many things being postponed or cancelled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But there’s a northwest Iowa church youth group that found a way to serve even after their planned mission trip was cancelled.
Jacob Sandholm is Youth Pastor at Sheldon United Methodist Church, and he says the youth group had a mission trip to Kansas City scheduled, until the pandemic came along.
(As above) “In March, we were starting to get people ready and signed up and stuff….but then COVID hit. Then we started talking, and we eventually came to a decision in about April or May saying we can’t go to Kansas City because it’s not safe for the kids and it’s not safe for us.”
Sandholm says it was decided that there were needs to serve right here at home.
(As above) “After a while we kind of talked about it and we thought, you know what? Sheldon needs help, too. Maybe there’s something we can do in Sheldon that we can do kind of a local mission trip experience.”
Then he says they came up with an idea that they thought would be perfect for a mission trip-type experience.
(As above) “After thinking about it, we have a friend, Karen Vanden Berg,who needed on of the Prairie Arts Historical Buildings repainted, and I thought that would be the perfect opportunity for the kids to help out and to repaint the whole building. So I talked to Karen and I said, ‘Hey, would this time, July 15th through 17th, would this be a good time for the kids to help this out?’ She was ecstatic, she was excited, and that’s what we did.”
Sandholm says 21 kids took part in this local mission trip.
(As above) “We took twenty-one kids, twenty-one kids signed up and twenty-one kids came to the Prairie Arts Complex. We had a few kids pulling weeds and helping out with the lawn care all around the buildings and all around the village there, as well as our senior high youth, so from 9th Grade up to 12th grade…and the adults…we all got on the scaffolds and ladders and we painted the whole building form the front to the back, and we had a lot of fun doing it.”
He says he reminded the kids that a mission trip is all to glorify God.
(As above) “It was a really good day. But the one thing that we always have to remember, and the one thing that we told the youth, the main thing that they should know is that this was still a mission experience. What we do, while it was to help Karen, it was to help the community of Sheldon a little bit, it’s also to glorify God in what we do, as well.”
In addition to the high school kids who painted and groomed at the Prairie Arts Historical Site, 7th and 8th grade members of the youth group worked on various cleaning projects at the church this past Friday morning as part of their mission trip experience.
