IWA High School students serve others throughout Holy Week

More than 70 students from Incarnate Word Academy High School’s Mission Team are spreading God’s love and serving others throughout Holy Week in Big Wells, Asherton, La Pryor, and Batesville, Texas.

The IWA Mission Team commits their time and efforts to serving others. The students work and worship together with the people in the parishes and communities in which they serve.

Students visited Big Wells and Asherton this past year to help people from those communities. Students painted homes and buildings, built porches for residents, rebuilt stair entrances and played with neighborhood children.

This year, the group is traveling to two more communities to provide residents with food, supplies and help with any projects that need completion.

Students from the IWA Elementary Level are also doing their part to aid the high school level on their mission trip. The elementary student council collected toys, coloring books, stuffed animals, markers, crayons and more to provide children of these communities.

In the early years of the IWA Mission Team students traveled to Mexico. Part of their experience was immersing into the lives of the people in the towns that they visited.

“We want to give our young people the gift of seeing life through the eyes of others,” IWA Campus Minister Sister Rosa Ortiz, IWBS said. “So in addition to the manual labor that our students put forth to help revitalize communities, they also have the opportunity to have a deeper understanding of lifestyles that are very different from their own life experience.”

In addition to the trip, more than 30 students from the mission team are participating in different projects throughout Corpus Christi during Holy Week.

Students are volunteering at Sacred Heart, Holy Family and Holy Cross parishes as well as helping the elderly in our community and feeding the homeless at the Mother Therese Shelter.

The students’ dedication to these mission projects answers the call of Pope Francis to be missionary disciples.