By Victor Dixon, Editor-in-Chief
Over spring break, Campus Ministry took a group of students to San Antonio to work alongside a nonprofit organization.
The Newman group has been hosting these annual Caritas Christi service trips for many years, and each year, a student minister – sophomore Nathan Galicia this year – helps to research and plan the trip.
Eight students went on the trip, along with Emily Simon, assistant director of Campus Ministry, and Father Adam Grelinger, director of Campus Ministry.
“Obviously we want to complete a lot of service, but also, it’s spring break. We want students to have fun and enjoy the road trip,” Simon said. “We had service for about two days and then went to SeaWorld. We also spent the evenings seeing the San Jose Mission Church and went to the River Walk, saw the Alamo.”
The organization the group volunteered with is called the Texas Ramp Project, which builds wheelchair ramps for elderly and disabled people who could not otherwise afford them.
The experience was described by some of the students who participated as being eye-opening and transformative, making them realize that any act of charity is worthwhile.
That revelation was inspired by the passion and vision shown by the people from the project who managed the student volunteers’ work, freshman Anna Lobmeyer said.
“He (the volunteer manager) was thinking about it in the context of faith all the time and was trying to show us what it meant to do this for other people,” she said. “I really wish I could see this as clearly as he could. He was really trying to instill in us that this is something very important to do in your life.”
PHOTO: Courtesy photo, Texas Ramp Project
