Students Spend Summer Serving Others
A group of five Westmont students has returned to the United States after spending a month serving people in Guatemala. This year, Emmaus Road teams are also traveling to Russia, Western Europe (France, Holland, Amsterdam) and Indonesia.
Student Rochelle Comeaux led the Guatemala team. Though the students spent many hours teaching English, building chicken coops, painting a hospital and serving meals, they are the ones who benefited the most from the summer service trip.
“The people want to do so much for us and cook us so much food and take us places and show us things and tutor us in Spanish,” Comeaux says.
Emmaus Road is just one program that encourages Westmont students to take part in cross-cultural service to help them understand the impact of world events and cultures. This was part of Westmont founder Ruth Kerr’s vision for the college that celebrates its 70th year in October.
Westmont students continue to make connections and forge lasting relationships. Comeaux and the Guatemala team worked with Students International (SI) for a week. SI is based in Visalia and is involved in long-term, on going community development in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala. The Westmont students spent a week at an SI ministry site in Guatemala, teaching English and building chicken coops then filling them with chicks for families there.
The team also went to Uspantán, Guatemala, where Westmont has a 15-year relationship with the Hernández family and the Westmont Bethel Hospital they founded. Volunteers have built small clinics throughout the area to provide basic medical care to residents who have no access to medical care.
This year’s mission statement explains the summer programs: “Emmaus Road is a bridge connecting individuals to the world causing them to step out of their comfort zones and experience different cultures. As a result, we create learners, servants, and storytellers, who daily strive for unity, reconciliation, and redemption.”
Comeaux says she will encourage fellow students next summer to take part in the trip to Guatemala next summer to build a new home for a woman they met who lives with her two sons in a shack in the rugged mountains above Uspantán.
Comeaux wants to be a high school English teacher and plans to earn her credential at UC Santa Barbara after she graduates from Westmont next year. She hopes her time in Guatemala will help her become bilingual.
“I don’t want to start teaching without being fluent in Spanish,” she says. “I want to be able to speak to the parents of my students in their own language and show them that I care enough about their culture to learn their language.”
The six-member team that went to Russia to work at two summer camps for orphaned youth and young adults will return Wednesday, July 19. The 10-member team in Indonesia gets back Saturday, July 22. The five-member Western Europe team will host a day camp for children and return Tuesday, Aug. 8.