Hello! My name is Stephanie Hamilton, and I am a junior student at Cedarville University. I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with Inner City Impact (ICI) in Chicago through Cedarville’s Global Outreach (GO) program. I joined the team as a sophomore and went on the week-long trip that was provided during our spring break in March of 2024, and I cannot speak highly enough about the trip. This experience, including the kids, ICI staff, and my Cedarville team, had such an enormous impact on me and my view of missions. Because of this wonderful experience, I made the decision to return to ICI through the GO trip provided over fall break.
As the fall semester began, I was so excited to return to ICI. There were six of us from the spring break team that decided to go on the trip again. As we began to prepare for the trip, we met the seven new Cedarville students on the team, and they fit right in. Our team meetings consisted of logistics for the trip (what to bring, what not to bring, etc.), a vague itinerary (including the fall carnival we would be volunteering for), and practice sharing the Gospel. As Christians who are in the mission field, it is important that you know how to share the Gospel with others. In this specific case, it was important to know our audience and recognize that we could be having a Gospel conversation with a five-year-old child. To help prepare for this, we would pair off during our meetings to act out a scenario in which we might be required to share the Gospel. While we were aware that this was very different from the real thing, it helped to ease some anxiety about the possibility of these conversations.
As for the itinerary, we were very excited for the carnival that we were going to help with, but there were other things that we needed to do before we could get to that! We did accomplish a few tasks that needed to be done around the facility. Two of our team members cleaned and repaired the roof of a trailer, and a few of us helped with organization and cleaning in their storage area. Even though these seem like small tasks, they were things that the staff of ICI did not always have time to get done on their own, and the relief of having them completed was something that we helped to provide. We also were able to help with the usual clubs that ICI puts on for the kids. On Thursday, we got to spend time with the high schoolers. We spent time in fellowship with them, and ICI did a build-your-own-pizza night! We then went into a Bible study for the last part of the night. On Friday, we helped with the elementary school club. This club consisted of three “stations”: board games, carnival games (which we had set up for the carnival), and Bible lessons. The kids were split up into three groups by age and spent the night going from one station to another.
On the first day of preparation for the carnival, our two big projects were the escape room and the box maze. Three of our team members set up an escape room that consisted of saving an art museum from a “glitter bomb,” and they spent most of the two days before the carnival hashing out all the clues and getting everything set up! They did a phenomenal job on it. Kids of all ages loved figuring out the puzzle, and the team members who got to manage it loved being a part of it! The rest of us were focused on the box maze for the bulk of the trip. We spent two days both designing and putting together the maze, with people cutting apart, taping, and putting boxes together. During the carnival, the maze was a hit! We had kids that would get through the whole thing and then come right back around to the front to go through it again. The carnival also consisted of the typical games you might find at other carnivals, and we provided lunch, popcorn, and cotton candy. Thankfully, all of us got to experience all aspects of the carnival, and we loved having the opportunity to interact with the kids and their parents as they enjoyed the event.
ICI is a wonderful organization that provides an incredible ministry for the kids of Chicago. I have been so blessed to even be a small part of their mission, and I am so excited to be able to serve with them again in the future.
Tags: #cedarville, #church, #experience, #experiences, #globaloutreach, #GO, #missions, #opportunities
Posted in: Church, Experience, Global Outreach