The Senior High Youth left in July 2017 for Washington, DC, for their annual mission trip.
Each month we will feature one youth’s views of their experience. This time it’s from Kyle Richardson.
“The top moment from my mission trip came from when we went to a pool with the kids from Little Lights, which is a day camp.” I got paired with a little kid name Zion. When I got paired with him, I started asking him what type of stuff he likes and he pointed at Caroline and said, “I like her.” From that point on in the day it was near impossible to get him away from Caroline. When we were in the pool, he would always make me chase Caroline and her child. Whenever I would attempt to pull him away from her, he would yell at me to bring him back to Caroline. I would just laugh and just continue to bring him away from Caroline. When we had to leave the pool to go back to the playground, Zion decided he would try to go into the locker room to try to see Caroline. Luckily, I stopped him before he got too far. I told him that we would stay outside of the building while she got ready and then we could walk to the playground together. We waited for a couple of minutes as all the other kids came out. Finally, Caroline came out and he ran over to her and held her hand. It was on that walk that he gave me my nickname, which was “Chicken Doughnut with Sauce.” It made me feel very special that I had a new name. After that day, he did not talk to me much except for when he told me that he wanted me to sit next to him when we were all in a big group together. I understand that the kids at Little Lights all live very tough home lives and they need a positive influence in their lives. That is why I have decided to look into tutoring when I am in Syracuse.”
