Christpower comes to Ascension
After some fitful starts, it seems that summer is finally here to stay. The signs are clear: the sun is shining, the lawnmowers are a-roaring, and people are walking by with that extra spring in their step. At Ascension, for a number of years the surest sign of summer’s arrival has been the coming of Christpower volunteers to our community.
In the week ahead, 125 high-school age youth from a number of our fellow Catholic parishes — including Holy Name of Jesus in Medina, Saint Vincent de Paul in Brooklyn Park, Saint Joseph the Worker in Maple Grove, and others — will call the classrooms of Ascension School home as they engage in service to our community and spiritual formation.
What kind of service? The opportunities are as diverse as the needs in North Minneapolis. Obviously, last month’s tornado and the subsequent cleanup weigh heavy on the community. Christpower will be dispatching a team of students each day to assist the organizations that are coordinating this cleanup effort. Besides tornado relief, our Christpower volunteers will be getting their hands dirty helping members of the Ascension community with home maintenance tasks: weeding, painting, planting, washing windows, and cleaning out basements and garages. As with last year, we will also send a couple of teams of youths to the Saint Bernard’s community in Saint Paul to help with similar needs there. And of course, there will be work to do around the Ascension campus itself: weeding, planting, and cleaning in the church and rectory.
But before you start thinking that Christpower is a week of nothing but work, work, work, you should know about a few of the fun activities planned. There’s the senior luncheon, when Christpower hosts our elderly neighbors for a lunch that always involves more than a little joking around. And on Thursday Christpower participants will host a carnival for the first through fifth graders attending Ascension School’s summer enrichment SLAM program. The games and activities they share are a chance for both groups to get to know each other and blow off a little steam after a week of hard work.
Between all the fun and the hard work, it’s hard to believe that Christpower involves some important spiritual aspects as well, but spirituality forms the center of just about everything that goes on here at Ascension. During the seven days they spend here, Christpower participants will attend mass every morning. Then, after the day’s hard work out in our community, they have a chance to reflect on the lessons and challenges of the day before praying in adoration of the blessed sacrament. The experience culminates with a farewell mass on Saturday morning that all family members are invited to attend.
There is no doubt that Christpower has a profound effect on the youths and adult leaders who participate. Maybe it can be best summed up in a story one of our staff members, Cindy Boggs, recently related: On her way through the Ascension peace garden a few weeks ago, Cindy encountered a young woman sitting quietly on a bench. As there was to be a group of people volunteering in the garden that night Cindy asked the woman if she was there to volunteer. “No,” the woman replied, “I’ve been volunteering all day, helping with tornado relief. I’m just waiting for my ride. I was a Christpower volunteer for four years, and over those years I developed such a strong bond with this place, and such a sense of peace, that I wanted to come back, so I asked my ride to meet me here.” This woman’s sense of service, giving, and her connection to our community are exactly what Christpower is all about.
Christpower volunteers will be with us from June 19th through June 25th. If you have any questions about the program please contact Cindy Boggs at 612-424-6210.
