by Kathy Winter
On Monday, June 25, at 5 PM, a group of about 30 young people and adults from Zion left Garretson to make a journey to Houston, Texas for the 2018 ELCA National Youth Gathering. The theme of the Gathering was “This Changes Everything” and was attended by young people from the whole United States and Puerto Rico. The Garretson group drove about 20 hours through the night and arrived in Houston in the early afternoon just in time to attend a Houston Astro’s baseball game. The next morning they hopped on the bus again to visit the NASA Johnson Space Center. The Gathering started on Wednesday evening with all 31,000 of the attendees coming together.
The Gathering is a time for youth and supervising adults to hear various speakers from many different back- grounds and experiences, to provide servant work to the city of Houston, to meet and mingle with other Christian youth, to worship, and to experience life in the city. Some speakers and experiences, as they all would agree, pushed their understanding of what it means to be Christian. “The most eye opening part was watching everyone stand up and applaud a young man who shared his experience of recovery from drug and alcohol abuse. He entered treatment as a sophomore in high school and was now celebrating 10 years sobriety. Most of the speakers were our age or shared experiences and struggles that people our age could relate to,” said Emily Malsom. All in all, the speakers and the experiences were excellent; they challenged, they inspired, and they made them think how God does change everything, their world and themselves.
They also were able to listen to some wonderful musicians with songs both familiar and new. The house band played every evening in addition to several Christian recording artists and bands – the highlight of which was Tenth Avenue North.
Each day they group did something different. One day is called Synod Day where each synod meets separately to learn, to worship, and to receive communion. The South Dakota synod had the most attendees of any synod in the US with 1384 people at the gathering. Another day is Servant Day which is a time when 10,000+ of the gathering attendees are sent out in safety orange shirts throughout Houston to do various projects that range from setting up and conducting a book fair to help children pick out their very first books (which is what the Garretson group did), to cleaning up a park affected by the hurricane, to building a garden, to learning about poverty. Rakell Gnadt stated, “My favorite part was working with the little kids and seeing them get so excited about the books.” There were three servant days during the gathering so all 31,000 were able to assist Houston in some way. The third day is called Interactive Learning. That was a day when they were able to play, learn, and grow by participating in a variety of activities from zip lining to sewing school bags for Ethiopian children. Another one of the group, Brady Malsom, thought it was cool what they were able to accomplish in the city during that week.
For example, two habitat for humanity houses were built during that time as well as parks cleaned and grasses replanted, buildings and schools repainted, and books and manpower were provided for thousands of kids all over the city.
At the close of each day, everyone gathered at the NRG Arena for worship that culminated in the final worship service on Sunday morning before everyone left to return to their homes. The most amazing thing at that service was how they served communion to every one of the 31,000 in a little over 20 minutes.
Following that service, the Garretson group boarded their bus and began their long trek back to South Dakota. They arrived safely on Monday, July 2, tired and road weary, but full of their recent experiences of learning how God truly can and does change everything.
The group would like to thank all the people who made this trip possible – from planning to supporting all the fund raising efforts to keeping them all in their prayers.
