There Is Only We

Their smiles. The dancing. The sweaty, dirt-covered high fives. Praying together. The hugs.

This is what I will remember most from our recent trip to the Dominican Republic to visit our twin parish.

We called it a mission trip, but those words just don’t feel quite right.
Mission implies something to accomplish. What we experienced was accompaniment.
Mission implies doing. What we did was be with.
Mission implies someone else is meant to be changed. Yet it was we who were changed.

True and deep service isn’t one-sided. It is reciprocal.
It creates space for relationship and authentic connection.
It allows transformation to take place within everyone involved.
We aren’t doing for. We are doing with.

We experienced this over and over again with our brothers and sisters in Christ from Our Lady of Hope Parish.

We brought supplies and gifts, but it was their teens and young adults who helped us discern who should receive them and how they should be shared.

We helped with a concrete project on the church grounds, but it was their local experts who organized the work and gave direction.

We come from different cultures. We have different ideas and different ways of doing things. Serving alongside one another challenged us, refined us, and ultimately brought us closer—to each other and to our new friends in the Dominican Republic.

We came home feeling invested—not simply in what we are doing with our twin parish, but in who we are doing it with.

True and deep service defies the hierarchy that culture tries to convince us to live within.
There is no “us” and “them.”
There is only we.
No role is more important than another.
We all have gifts to contribute and a role to play.

Within five minutes of our bus arriving at the church each day, several children would begin to appear. They became the heartbeat of our experience—as children so often are in life.

They wanted to play with the soccer balls and crafts we brought, but mostly they wanted to spend time with the teens who had traveled with us. That simple act of playing together became one of the most important and joy-filled parts of our days.

Although it may not have looked like “work,” it required tremendous energy. It brought joy to the children, gave parents peace of mind knowing where their kids were and that they were safe, and gave us moments of laughter and connection between our concrete work and other projects.

Having these different opportunities to serve also allowed every person in our group to discover where they naturally fit. Watching people lean into their unique gifts was one of the most encouraging parts of the week.

It was as though each day everyone found their instrument within the orchestra so that together we could create something beautiful—each person humbly and obediently contributing in the way they felt called.

True and deep service doesn’t simply give us an opportunity to create change, it changes us.
It requires a posture of openness instead of control.
Curiosity instead of expectation.
A readiness for whatever God has planned and a willingness to adjust our course.

It requires vulnerability—the kind that allows relationship, emotion, and genuine human connection to become part of the work itself.

This is the place where we invite God in. And when we do, serving becomes so much more than we could have imagined.

Before we begin, we prepare with prayer.
We sit with God, thanking Him for the opportunity before us.
We ask Him what He wants us to know. What He wants us to learn.
We invite Him to shape our hearts and our minds, showing us not simply what to do, but how to be.

Prayer opens us. It softens us. It surrenders us. It allows us to experience every moment in full color.

There are so many layers to what we experience each day, yet many of us miss them because we never prepare our hearts before we begin. We check the boxes. We accomplish the tasks. But we fail to experience the people, the relationships, and the sacredness woven into the work itself.

God continually invites us to consider not only what we are doing, but who we are being in the doing.
To notice the energy and attitude we bring.
To notice the energy and attitude of those around us.
To create relationship within the task.

I think of Brother Lawrence, who found profound communion with God while sweeping floors, believing every ordinary act could be done for God’s glory.

I think of Mother Teresa, who was so attentive to the people before her that some days very little appeared to get “done.” Yet she knew that tending to hearts was often the work God had placed before her.

This is what service looks like in its truest expression.

Because service, at its deepest level, is communion. Communion with God. Communion with one another.

True and deep service invites us to encounter the love and the divine presence that already exists within us all.