Four weeks ago today I left with seventeen teenagers and two other chaperones for a trip to visit our sister parish in the Dominican Republic. Why take a week in February to go down to an island in the Caribbean, where the average temperature is in the low 80s during the day, and upper 60s at night?

The other answer is that I like to think of these trips as retreats. If you participate in a retreat, you leave behind your routines, your habits, and you examine and strengthen yourself in different ways. This trip was no exception, for me or for the other participants. For me these retreats are about getting to know myself better, my parish and its parishioners, and, most importantly, learning about my faith.

          For myself, getting ready was a huge challenge. I had to double up my class preparations in the preceding weeks, just so that I would have enough substitutes and alternative presentations to make this work. It was a lot of extra effort, during which I thought that I would never do this again during the school year. But I was able to get it together and still keep the sense that it was still worth it. Of course, that sense/feeling only increased after arriving in Monte Plata and doing the daily work that was required. We are doing something valuable and I have a small part in this.

          There are a lot of unflattering stereotypes of our teenagers, but I was very happy to find other dimensions of our parish youth. We were told that we were brave for traveling with 17 high schoolers, but this was never a problem for me. Our teens also had their personal tests: the lack of regular warm water, occasional electrical blackouts, the unpredictable and ever-changing schedules, language barriers, etc., but they proved to be excellent ambassadors for our parish.

          They are young adults. The young part was that there was a lot of clowning around; some were sharing Cosmopolitan magazine, and there was serious reaction at the airport when some found out that Tom Cruise and his girlfriend were splitting up. That was the young part. But this same group of kids was reading Joyce Carol Oates throughout the trip, doing Spanish homework, or reading about European history and Korean labor relations. I couldn’t believe it! This was the adult part. I even talked about religious vocations with one young participant who has actually considered the religious life.

          Traveling with teenagers never intimated me in the first place, but now I have a weird mixture of thoughts about this group. I started to get to know them and their families in a different way. I was getting to know my own parish by flying to Monte Plata. I really hope that I can maintain this contact somehow, because these are really interesting people I met my parish on this trip.

But our parish is much bigger now, for me and for the young people who went. We have a sister parish; St. Anthony is connected to us, and we are to them. When we got up the first morning, and all day until the welcoming reception at St. Anthony, so many people greeted me as a neighbor; they recognized me from previous trips; they told me how happy they were that I was able to return and, once again, they scolded me for not staying longer! They recognized Florence from a previous trip; they asked about past visitors (Janice, Bob, and Angeline) and asked how they were doing.

          This is what it’s all about; this is the body of Christ as described in our own catechism; this is the church that we all belong to, beyond differences in time zones, language, culture, class, and race.