Lutheran teens offer thoughts, prayers — and service
Angelica Torres, 18, a member of the Reconciliation Lutheran Church in Puerto Rico, joins other teens in helping create gardens at Mitchell Elementary School as part of the Lutheran Church’s triennial service gathering.
Months later, after the storm that changed everything, some of Alanna Vázquez’s friends and neighbors just couldn’t stand the rain. The searing memories it suddenly stirred of an unforgiving hurricane last year were just too much.
“There were some people who had real trauma from the hurricane,” said 14-year-old Alanna. “They couldn’t even listen to rain because of the memories that came with that.”
The post-traumatic stress provoked by a routine rainstorm has seized many Houstonians since last August, when Hurricane Harvey, a once-in-a-lifetime storm, devastated the region. But Alanna wasn’t living anywhere in Texas. She’s from Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria and its Category 4 wrath decimated the U.S. territory last September.
The emotional parallels between Puerto Rico and Houston over two epic hurricanes were unavoidable as Alanna visited Houston this week, one of 30,000 teens from across the country participating in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Youth Gathering.
Started in 1988 and occurring once every three years, the gathering allows Lutheran high schoolers from across the U.S. to join in service, music and prayer. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. famously gave a speech at the 1961 Miami Youth Gathering when it was still known as the Luther League Gathering. This year the teens began congregating in Houston on June 22 to celebrate their faith and bring attention to
the needs of the Houston community.
Each day the students split up into three groups: one that participates in community service projects throughout the city, another that takes part in an interactive learning day at NRG Stadium and a final group that does leadership training. Each day finishes with a Mass gathering filled with praise and worship music at NRG. The gathering continues through Sunday.
Though the decision to hold the event in Houston came more than three years ago, long before Harvey, some events have been scheduled to address post-hurricane needs.
A forest green bus rolled into the temporary campus of Mitchell Elementary in southeast Houston and out of this bus came 30-something enthusiastic teens wearing highlighter-orange Tshirts. Their shirts read “This Changes Everything.” That’s this year’s motto for the gathering.
Thursday’s service learning activity was planting a garden at Mitchell Elementary.
The garden will be used to teach the school’s children about environmental stewardship and healthy living.
Ten months ago, the “This” that changed everything for Mitchell Elementary was Hurricane Harvey. After Harvey, the school moved from its original location on Gulfdale Drive to its interim spot on Brisbane Street after severe flooding forced the school to close until at least the 2019-20 school year.
The teens who volunteered at the school are from Tacoma, Wash.; Benson, Minn.; and 10 students from Iglesia Evangélica Luterana Reconciliación in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico. For this last group, being in Houston seemed improbable after Maria destroyed the Caribbean island’s infrastructure, knocked out power for months and left an official death toll of at least 64 people.
“We got 42 inches of rain in 48 hours,” said Jafet Carreras, youth minister for the Puerto Rican group. “We had never seen anything like that before. … It was in a league of its own.”
Carreras’ group is one of the 12 Caribbean congregations present at the youth gathering. Carreras, a native of Toa Baja and teacher at Colegio Discipulos, was fortunate that his house sits high and only experienced about a foot of flooding during the storm. His neighbors weren’t as lucky.
“One of my neighbors across the street from me is an older lady,” Carreras recalled, “so I had to help get her out of her house because the water was already at waist-level.” Some of his other neighbors were forced to sit out on their roofs and had to be rescued.
After Maria, Carreras thought it would be impossible to raise enough funds for his group of teens to make it to Houston.
“We just had other things to take care of,” Carreras said. “We lost communication on the island for two weeks. There were eighthour lines for gas. It wasn’t until Holy Week that most of the island got its lights back.”
Luckily, none of the students in Carreras’ group experienced catastrophic damage to their homes. One student expressed how deep Maria’s pain cut throughout the island, even for those whose homes remained intact.
“We all know people that lost everything,” said 19-year-old Jonathan J. Pagán Agosto.
It was in these moments of despair that Carreras felt more support than ever from his Lutheran brothers and sisters.
“The Lutheran Disaster Response have helped. You have no idea how much they’ve helped, and they’ll be in Puerto Rico for two more years,” Carreras said.
Later, Carreras and his group received word that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America would help fund their trip to Houston.
Carreras said the organization paid for upward of 90 percent of his group’s trip. It even paid for them to attend the Multicultural Youth Leadership Event, designed to highlight and embrace the diversity of the Lutheran faith and was held this week at the University of Houston.
Carreras hopes the gathering will be a good way for his students to shift for a moment their focus from the suffering in Puerto Rico to a global view of service.
Angélica S. Torres Díaz, 18, who is attending her second youth gathering, said “we will be growing spiritually, socially and emotionally throughout this week.”
Some of the others students talked about how the gathering has served as an avenue for them to see a new part of the world.
“For most of us, this is a oncein-a-lifetime experience,” said 15year-old Alondra Quiñones. One youngster mentioned that he had never even been in a plane.
Carreras spoke about the high emotions overwhelming his students.
“Last night in the hotel everyone was crying from excitement,” said Carreras, understanding that for these teens this experience really could change everything.