During a mission trip to Nicaragua, youth minister Jason Deramo says his heart was set “on fire” for the Dedham community.
“I think by doing this kind of trip, kids come back and they’re more committed to doing more things for our community,” he said.
With the upcoming St. Mary’s Life Teen outreach ministry to Nicaragua, Deramo is hoping to ignite the same passion in the local youth.
Deramo went with about a dozen youth ministers from around the country to Managua, Nicaragua in January 2009 to experience a mission trip in a Third World country, and to get trained, while there, on how to lead such a journey.
He says “the goal has always been to come back, and run a trip with our own community.”
That will happen beginning on Saturday, when a group of 16 from St. Mary’s Life Teen – including current high school students, college alums of the program, and adult chaperones – travels to Nicaragua for a weeklong mission trip to serve, pray for, and spend time with orphans there.
St. Mary’s Life Teen is working with Mustard Seed Communities, a Catholic organization that has orphanages in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Zimbabwe. Deramo says Mustard Seed serves cognitively delayed or physically handicapped children who are orphans.
He says the goal is to “bring a level of Christ to the children and the orphanages,” at the same time that St. Mary’s members do light construction work – mixing cement and laying a foundation for new buildings, and doing some painting and yard work at the older orphanage.
Deramo is looking forward to seeing the same kids he met during his first trip, adding, “As a group, I’m just excited to get the chance to have our community experience this kind of mission trip. A lot of times people will say why go to a Third World country to do a mission trip when there are so many things in our country that we need to do?”
The youth minister says his team is excited to meet and work with the children in Nicaragua.
“(And) you hope that your presence is going to do a lot for them,” he says, “but really the reality which shocked me is how much you benefit from them,” including seeing the joy of the kids despite their situations.
Then you go back home knowing that you can make a difference in your community, he adds.
St. Mary’s Life Teen has been gearing up for the trip for nearly a year. Participants were required to get 40 “prayer partners” to support them spiritually and financially, and they each had to raise $1,300 through prayer partner donations and fundraisers.
“The missionaries that go seek prayer partners, people that will commit to praying for them during the week as well as committing to them financially during the trip,” Deramo says, noting that many people won’t ever get the chance to do a mission trip abroad. “By them giving you $25 or an item or just committing to prayer, (that) is really just their way to partner in the trip as well.”
Ryan Nash, 17, says people have been “really generous. I actually just got $300 from someone, which is really nice.”
“If I have to pick an emotion, I’m definitely more scared of what’s going to happen down there. We’re going to a Third World country,” he says. “I feel like I’m going to be so much more appreciative of what we have in America.”
The rising senior at Dedham High School says that he and fellow trip participant Beth Thomas, 17, just returned from a Life Teen leadership conference in Kansas that “was all about deepening your faith and being able to explain it to other people.”
With that life-changing training experience, and having such a close relationship with Jesus, Nash says, he thinks that when they go to talk with kids in Nicaragua, “it’s going to make us much more open to what’s going to happen.”
Thomas, who is entering her junior year at Mount Alvernia High School in Newton, says she is “really excited to be going because I’m glad to be able to see the world as a different perspective from what we have,” and thankful to “be able to help people and change their lives, and I hope that they change mine too.”
When Deramo went, he said that seeing people or kids without any food or family was devastating, she says. “I’m nervous to see that, but I think it will be good, trying to help them.”
The St. Mary’s group will also walk around La Chureca, the Managua city dump, and bring some food for people who live there. The 38-acre dump is home to about 1,500 people, according to Mustard Seed Communities, which does outreach there through its Christ in the Garbage Ministries.
“You literally turn a corner, and there’s the city dump – it’s in the background of a bustling city,” Deramo says. “It’s very heartbreaking. But for a day, we’ll experience that.”
Deramo says he can get by a little bit with Spanish, and that the Rev. Bill Lohan will offer a daily Mass in the language for children and workers at the orphanage and the St. Mary’s missionaries.
“I know how to say hola and ¿Cómo está?, but that’s really as far as it goes,” Nash says. “I know we’re going to learn just as much from the kids as we’re going to teach them. Probably more.”
Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.
