By Kira Ford, Special to Pine Whispers

When summer approaches, many students purchase new bathing suits and hit the gym in hopes of earning an enviable beach body. Others head to the doctor to receive painful vaccinations and collect donated medical supplies.

The latter are often preparing for a mission trip.

The term “mission trip” is quite broad, with all the different locations and services that are done depending on the group going. People of all ages and backgrounds are welcomed to take part in these opportunities to provide help to those in need, and many students from Reynolds High School do just that, whether it’s in the home community or on another continent.

“Everyone is so grateful and welcoming,” rising sophomore Sydney Gordon said. “They let you know how appreciative they are. It really makes you feel like you’re making a difference.”

The people being helped aren’t the only ones who benefit from the trips, though. The volunteers more often than not have nothing but great things to say about the opportunity and the impact it had on them.

“You could say it popped my Winston-Salem bubble,” rising sophomore Hannah Rice said. “It changes your attitude and the way you look at things around you.”

Rice went to the Dominican Republic with a group from First Presbyterian Church four years ago. The church’s project that year was to build a medical clinic from the ground up. The volunteers also made a point to have a lot of interaction with the people in the community.

“When we weren’t building, we went out into the village to play with the kids and meet people,” Rice said. “We read stories to the kids and made up little handshakes with them.”

Even simple actions like this brought so much joy to the kids and, in turn, to the volunteers. Upon returning home, the consensus of the volunteers was how grateful they felt for things they took for granted before going.

“You may think you know how much you have and that you’re grateful, but you don’t really know until you see people in such crisis,” Gordon said.

Casey Thomas, a YoungLife leader in Forsyth County, traveled to New York City for a much closer mission trip. She volunteered at a soup kitchen and renovated the mission house where they stayed. During her time at the soup kitchen, she met an elderly gentlemen who said he had been at job interviews all day before coming to the soup kitchen.

“He was one of the many who lost his job on 9/11. He was lucky enough to not be at work that day, but obviously there was no job to go back to after the towers fell,” Thomas said. “He lost everything he had worked his whole life to achieve. Take every opportunity to do good for other people, because you don’t know what they’ve been through. Never look down on people whose story you don’t know.”

A common misconception about mission trips is that they are only for people who attend a church. Some trips are religious-based, but anyone willing to serve and work is welcome to come, said recent graduate Hayley Geis.

“I’ve never seen a group of people work so well together,” Geis said of a recent trip she took. “It was like all our problems back home were set aside because we were all working together for the same purpose of helping these people.”

No matter the project being done, fundraising and a lot of preparation usually must be done prior to the trip. Vaccines tend to be necessary for many trips to prevent diseases that people don’t have to worry about in most areas of the United States.

Painful? Sometimes. Worth it? Absolutely. Mission trips are an opportunity students don’t want to miss out on.

“Even if you don’t want to go, you should go,” Rice said. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

Rising sophomore Kira Ford wrote this story as her final project for Introduction to Journalism.