IWA high school students serve others throughout Holy Week

IWA high school students serving others throughout Holy Week

Incarnate Word Academy high school students’ Mission Team is spreading God’s love and serving others throughout Holy Week from March 29-April 4 in Big Wells, Asherton, La Pryor and Batesville, Texas. The group, which includes more than 70 students, left on Sunday, March 29.

The Mission Team work and worship together with the people in the parishes and communities in which they serve. On Monday, March 30, the Mission Team began to build entrances for residents’ homes in La Pryor. Students also played with neighborhood children and enjoyed meals with parish members from a church in that area.

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

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 helping in the Texas Winter Garden region, several high school level students will be doing missionary work here in Corpus Christi at the Catholic Worker House and Christ the King parish on Thursday, April 2, 2015 and Saturday, April 4, 2015.

The students’ dedication to these mission projects is an example of IWA’s recognition of God’s blessings and commitment to sharing them with others in school, family, Church, and community.

( South Texas Associate Editor Mary Cottingham will be embedded with the Mission Team for the rest of the week and will send daily reports.)

Photos by Priscilla Ramos/Mary Cottingham