Youth Missions

"An Investment in the Youth of Our Church"

Each year, members of the Presbyterian Youth Fellowship group, along with adult sponsors, travel to various sites within the country to serve God through direct service to His people.

2009 Lansing, Michigan :

Detaisl of the trip to be added later

2008 Louisville, Kentucky :

On Sunday, June 29th 2008, twenty-nine youths and adults left Lake Shore Park for Louisville, Kentucky.  There we met up with 20 youths and adults from the West Plano Presbyterian Church of Plano Texas.  Attending from our church were Greg, Sharon, and Kim Loyd, Leslie Sedmak, Amanda Brace, Megan Volpone, Cari Posum, and Rachel van’t Veer.  We stayed at the Harvey Browne Presbyterian Church in St. Matthews, Kentucky.   We worked very hard at recycling all week, saving over 200 pounds of garbage from our landfills.  We worked at the Boys & Girls Club of Newbury, the Cabbage Patch Settlement House, the Wayside Christian mission, the Presbyterian Child Development Center, the Salvation Army Center of Hope, and the Harvey Browne Presbyterian Church.  We did gardening and yard work, built a fence, played with children and also prepared and served meals at the homeless shelter.  We went to the Louisville Slugger Museum to see how bats were made for Major league Baseball teams.  Afterward, we went to the Old Spaghetti Factory and saw fireworks from 6 cities on the Louisville Riverfront.  The Highlight of the trip was Wednesday morning when we went to the Presbyterian Center.  It was very interesting to hear some of the history of the Presbyterian Church, to see the beautiful artwork, and to hear about the programs available to all of us.  While there, we attended worship and had communion.  The Rev. Shane Nanney preached that morning.  A wonderful time was had by all learning and growing in Christ. 

2007 Saranac Lake, New York :

On June 23, 2007, a group of 45 junior/senior high school students and 10 adults went on a mission trip to Saranac Lake New York.  They stayed in the fellowship hall of the Methodist Church of Saranac lake.  They were grateful to be able to serve the people of the area by working for several service groups.  One project was working for “Habitat for Humanity of the Adirondacks”.  There, a group cleared a mountainside of trees & brush and dug drainage trenches surrounding the Habitat for Humanities home under construction.  Another group worked at the church manse landscaping that area.  There was work scheduled through Comlinks, a community based service group for Saranac Lake.  This work included cleaning a playground area, weeding & planting a mountainside area near a parking lot, planting a flower garden, and scraping/painting guardrails at a low-income apartment complex.  They had three groups working at a shelter for battered women and children.  One group built an amazing playground, while another erected a fence around the backyard for safety.  The other group was responsible for planting a huge vegetable garden with lots of soil being brought in.  A kitchen crew from our group was formed and was responsible for cooking breakfast and dinner each day.  Lunches were packed by individuals and then taken to our work sites.  Their entire group put on a dinner for the Methodist congregation.  We put on the musical “Bones”, the E Vision, as a thank you for the hospitality of their church.  They did see some of the other sites of the area including Lake Placid (the home of the winter Olympics), A gondola ride to the top of Little Whiteface Mountain, a stop at “The Wild” a hands on natural history museum of the Adirondack area, and a stop in Burlington, Vermont where they took our bus on a boat across Lake Champlain.  It was an honor to serve God by Helping others in need.

2006 Penasco, New Mexico:

In the past two years these young Christians have traveled to Washington, D.C. and New York City. This year youth missionaries and their sponsors, representing several churches in Ashtabula County's Cluster of Presbyterian Churches, traveled nearly 2000 miles to Penasco, New Mexico, to conduct a week-long bible school for area children and to provide other services such as painting, weed removal, special projects (reinstalling a cross atop of our host church, Emmanual Presbyterian Church) and general maintenance activities at other area churches and the homes of elderly or infirmed persons. In addition to the activities just mentioned, floating crews of missionaries assembled a first-rate playground set at our host church, which consisted of various swings, climbing ladders and a rock climbing surface, a tower and a built-in sandbox.