June 4, 2010

‘God used my students to bring God’s love into the world’

Kevin Thacker dances with an unidentified woman at a senior citizens center in Copperhill, Tenn., one of the ways that eighth-grade students from Holy Cross Central School in Indianapolis connected with people during a mission trip there this spring. (Submitted photo)

Kevin Thacker dances with an unidentified woman at a senior citizens center in Copperhill, Tenn., one of the ways that eighth-grade students from Holy Cross Central School in Indianapolis connected with people during a mission trip there this spring. (Submitted photo)

By John Shaughnessy

Sarah Luckhaupt still smiles when she thinks about her eighth-grade students dancing the two-step with senior citizens while a bluegrass band played.

She still beams with pride when she recalls how hard the boys and girls worked to scrape and paint the house of an elderly woman—and how they prayed together every night during their weeklong mission trip to Copperhill, Tenn., in April.

“I run into people who doubt the potential of my students,” says Luckhaupt, the eighth-grade teacher at Holy Cross Central School in Indianapolis.

“Some of my students are plagued by poverty, rough home lives, and are fighting the temptations of the streets. I watch my students overcome these obstacles every day. On the trip, they were able to completely remove themselves from their city lifestyle and dedicate their week to people who truly needed them.”

One moment especially showed the difference that the 24 students made as they combined projects that involved manual labor with efforts that tried to personally connect with people. It happened at the senior citizens center where the bluegrass band played.

“Before lunch, we joined the band in prayer,” Luckhaupt recalls. “The main singer of the bluegrass band was an ordained minister. He gave a prayer of thanksgiving for us. After the prayer, we all sat down and ate together. The minister made his way over to our table. He thanked us for coming down and helping the people who can’t afford the work that we were doing for them. He told us that God had truly blessed them with our love and our work. He walked away in tears.

“The lives of those in Copperhill were changed, and the lives of my students were changed. God used my students to bring God’s love into the world.” †

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