by Fred & Gloria Strickert
The ELCA’s Best Kept Secret:
Young Adults in Global Mission (YAGM)
If you are a college/ university student nearing graduation, consider taking a year off before entering the job market or grad school with this year-long global service program.
If you are a church member having met someone embarking on the YAGM program, offer them $ 25 for the support they have to raise, and, in return, get on their communication list to live vicariously their life-changing experiences.
If you are a church leader, find out who are the YAGM alums in your community and synod, and invite them to share how their year of service has enhanced their life in the church.
The ELCA website YAGM page (Click here) has this inviting photo
We have been blessed this past year here in Jerusalem with six amazing, dedicated, and talented young adults (we call them YAGMs) who have impacted our lives and the lives of the Palestinian church, while taking a giant step that means they will never see the world in the same way as before.
The YAGM program remains the ELCA’s best kept secret—even after ten years.
I still remember the day twelve years or so ago when my academic advisee, Brandon, walked into my Wartburg College office announcing that he had decided to take a year off from college for this new ELCA program in England called “Time for God”—that was what the program was called that first year. I tried to talk Brandon out of it. “I’ll never see you again,” I told him. “You’ll just drop out of school.” Instead, Brandon returned a year later a different person, a new and improved Brandon, a Brandon who had new eyes for his academic work, a Brandon with a strong sense of calling for work in the church.
Okay. So I was wrong.
Over the next years, I found myself encouraging students to apply for this new YAGM program and many were accepted:
• Sara, Sarah, & Jeremy in England.
• JoHanna in Thailand.
• Ellen & Lou in Malaysia.
• Jake & Angela in Argentina.
• Britney in Mexico.
• Nicole in South Africa.
• Jess in Slovakia.
Hearing about their experiences, I learned a lot about the world and the global church. I also came to realize what a gem the ELCA has in this life-shaping program.
Consider the impact that 419 YAGMs have had on the church returning from a year of service over these last ten years—40 to 50 every year.
Still it seems to be the best kept secret!
While serving on the ELCA Global Mission Board (later renamed Program Committee) a few years ago, I remember our conversation in view of an impending global financial crisis and threatening budget cuts, “Whatever you do, don’t cut the YAGM program. This is the guarantee for a church with a future in Global Mission!” We all agreed.
Later, one February when in Buenos Aires to visit our college’s study abroad sites at several universities, I added an extra day to my trip and phoned Kate Lawler, ELCA missionary and in-country YAGM coordinator for Argentina. We spent a whole day traveling around to YAGM sites, observing the work of YAGMs in the ARC community of Buenos Aires and in a bario where after school programs were making a difference in the lives of the disadvantaged.
So, when considering a call to Jerusalem, one of the things that sold us was the YAGM program here.
Now after a year, we have said our farewells to our six YAGMs, who living and working side-by-side with Palestinian Christians, have changed the perceptions about Americans while having their own eyes opened about people mostly neglected, and often inaccurately maligned in the public media.
It’s been an amazing year of memories with our YAGMs as they:
• Slept on our living room floor in order to make it on time to our 5:30 a.m. Easter Sunrise Service.
• Worked in our kitchen to help prepare Christmas Brunch for seventy.
• Piled into our car to ride from an Advent Service in Bethlehem to the Bedouin Tent Restaurant for a messa of Arab salads and a glass of Cremisan wine.
• Joined in thought-provoking questions in living room Bible Study.
• Shared their joys and sorrows.
• Served as readers and communion assistants in church on Sundays when they were not worshipping in their local congregations.
• Relaxed on the volleyball court at our Wednesday evening Mount of Olives gatherings.
• And pondered with Gloria, as their interim coordinator, about what the future might bring.
Most of them served as teaching assistants in the ELCJHL Lutheran Schools or the Helen Keller School for the Visually Impaired. Individual activities ranged from singing in a Palestinian Choir in Ramallah, Playing Trumpet in the Beit Sahour Scouts “Drum and ‘Bugle’ Corps,” Coaching a swim team, assisting at a Palestinian Women’s Craft Center, and working with disabled children. This is what accompaniment is all about.
This fall the ELCA will send out fifty new YAGMs. What if the ELCA were able to send out 100 YAGMs each year? Or 200? Three for each Synod? Or more? Could the church handle it? Would it be prepared to be swamped with returning YAGMs fired up for global mission?
By now, our six YAGMs—Janelle, Sarah, Abby, Trena, David, and Luke—have arrived in the States, readjusting with culture shock, but energized, and realizing they will never be the same. Two are heading to seminary this fall, one to grad school in social work, one to Lutheran Volunteer Corps, one to a community art program, and one to serve as a recruiter for ELCA Global Mission before later enrolling in Dental School.
In Jerusalem, there is an empty spot without them.
By the end of August, however, we will be welcoming Michelle, Sara, Megan, Alma, Courtney, and Laurin-Whitney as they begin a year as Young Adults in Global Mission.
So we invite your prayers for the entire YAGM program throughout the world and especially here in Jerusalem.
Pray for our new YAGM country coordinators, Julie Rossate and Jeff VonWald, as they embark on this new ministry.
Pray for our depart-ing YAGMs in their reentry and witness of what they have seen and heard.
Pray for the new YAGMs as they:
• Say their farewells for the year to families and friends;
• Study and read in preparation for a new culture;
• Pack their suitcases, with enough to get by, but leaving unnecessary baggage behind;
• Await approval of visas, inshallah;
• Take part in stateside orientation in Chicago in August;
• Travel safely;
• And as they learn to expect the unexpected in this walk of faith.
The ELW (bottom of page 304) has a beautiful prayer for such persons committed to ventures of accompaniment:
O God, you have called your servants to ventures
of which we cannot see the ending,
by paths as yet untrodden,
through perils unknown.
Give us faith to go out with good courage,
not knowing where we go,
but only that your hand is leading us
and your love supporting us;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
by Fred & Gloria Strickert
http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/
