I’m a 2nd year missionary from Modesto, CA.
What brought you to Christ in the City?
It’s been on my heart for the last several years to do a year of mission. Once I learned about Christ in the City’s particular mission of loving and serving our friends on the street, I felt very drawn to this mission. During the last two spring breaks of college, I volunteered with a weeklong mission that holds many similarities to Christ in the City’s experience of Mission Trips. Similarities such as living in community, commitment to prayer as well as serving the poor and the homeless. At one point during this experience, I worked alongside a woman who for many years has been a driver for a Catholic non-profit that drops off daily lunches for those in need. What really stood out to me was just how open many of the individuals were with her as they visited the food truck. They shared their highs and lows with her, their roses and thorns. And in addition, before we’d reach many of our stops along the route, she would brief me about the people we would likely encounter at that stop. She knew them personally. It wasn’t transactional, it was truly relational. I loved this experience so much and longed to do the same thing for a more extended period of time that I just knew I had to apply to Christ in the City.
How has Christ In The City helped you grow?
Christ In The City has absolutely helped me to grow, and to grow in ways I hadn’t imagined before beginning my first year of service. The dedicated time in our schedule to prayer and daily Mass has been a tremendous gift towards my own spiritual growth. But the most prominent ways in which I have grown during my time at Christ In The City has been in recognizing and acknowledging my own poverty as well as how I have grown as a person. At Christ In The City, there are four pillars of formation–Intellectual, Spiritual, Apostolic and Human. To my personal surprise, I have grown so much as a person (Human Pillar). At Christ In The City, whether on the streets or within community life, we can experience a wide array of emotions. Emotions such as the energetic happiness of dance parties in our kitchen to deep sadness in seeing the suffering that our friends on the streets at times can experience. Through the formation program aspect at Christ In The City, I have grown in acknowledging and processing this wide array of emotions well and this has been such a gift in helping to prevent me from feeling burnt out from the Street Ministry that we do which I so deeply love.
A little about me…
Hiya! Feel free to call me Jess! I have two older brothers along with a twin brother (yes, a twin). I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in Child Development as I felt so drawn to be able to make a direct difference in the lives of children, especially those who might experience less love and patience such as foster children and special needs children. I love enjoying the little things in life like daily walks around the neighborhood, learning new things often, reading books and I have always loved doing arts and crafts ever since I was little. I dabble in many things, but I especially enjoy drawing, brush lettering, crocheting and have even tried printmaking.ently have picked up printmaking.
