Teen's mission work meant 'dying to self'

Although Melissa Waldron, 16, lives in Johnstown, she knows firsthand what it's like to be in the jungle. This past summer, the parishioner of St. Mary of Mt. Carmel Church in Gloversville spent four weeks as a missionary among the Choco Indians of Panama.

Melissa -- whose winning teen essay appears at left -- became interested in evangelical effort when a friend went to China the previous summer with a non-denominational group called Teen Mania Ministries. It sends teens and young adults to Third World countries to spread the Word of God.

When her friend returned, Melissa said, she had so much enthusiasm that "I decided to look into the prospect of missionary work myself."

Off to Panama

After training in Garden Valley, Texas, the organization's home base, Melissa and about 90 other teens and young adults were flown to Panama City.

For several days, they received additional training and then set out on their journey into the Darien Jungle to their destination; a village called Ipiti Embera.

The main focus, in Melissa's words, was to "spread God's love and His truth to everyone and to follow Christ as a disciple."

Culture shock

Along with eight adult chaperons, the teens made their berth in the village church, a structure described by Melissa as a "concrete building with nothing but some benches inside, holes in the walls and no altar at all."

"I was in culture shock at first," she said, citing a nearby river as an example. "They bathed in it, washed their clothes in it and even took their drinking water from it. We also bathed in it every day.

"There was a lot of poverty. There is also widespread drug abuse. They actually sell drugs in the jungle, and there are gangs of teens. Part of our work was to get the teens to recommit themselves to God."

Daily work

Each day, Melissa and her peers "worked and played with the villagers. That meant cleaning up trash, washing clothes, helping them clean their huts -- everything."

Their service projects included tearing down dwellings that were destroyed by storms and heavy rains that blanket the area from November through March. The huts are built on stilts; when the ground washes away, the huts collapse.

The teens also "machete'd back yards, lawns and fields," areas that quickly become overgrown.

"It helps stop malaria," she explained. "There is water everywhere. After we cut the jungle growth back, we'd fill puddles of standing water with rocks from the fields."

Play and pray

At 11 a.m. each day, the villagers halted their work to eat lunch. The teens used this time to "play with the children and go hut-to-hut, talking, eating and just being with the villagers," Melissa said. "In the afternoons, we would teach the children and adults about Jesus, sing songs and conduct a Bible school."

The teens also performed "drama ministries" or skits from Scripture.

"Those people think we are all rich," she reflected. "They live in poverty, but I didn't see their hunger for material things. They were deeply hungering for God's Word. We brought Bibles to them, and one woman just cried and cried when I gave her a Bible. She told me she would read it every day of her life.

"The trip changed my whole perspective on what is important in life. When I was there, I learned to die to myself, to put myself last and others first. I experienced a deep level of humility in serving others.

"We tried not to base the trip on success, what we could accomplish. Rather, we decided to leave it up to God and what He wanted to do through us. Many people came to the Lord when we were there. Our basic goal was to evangelize others."

(11/6/03) [[In-content Ad]]