Summer Staff Preview! Meet Trevor.

When a Church signs up to go on a mission trip with YouthWorks, they are signing up for a whole lot more than just a place to stay and some food. We provide a host of other invaluable resources that make a YouthWorks trip truly transformative. We’ve talked about many of these resources on the blog in the past and today I want to highlight what is certainly one of our most treasured parts of the summer – our summer staff.

 

Our summer staff are the ones that truly guide Church Groups through the week. They stay up late getting breakfast ready, go the extra mile to make sure ministry schedules are set up and deliver programming that will help participants critically engage in what is happening on a mission trip. 

 

For the next couple of weeks we will be highlighting a few of our fine summer staff in an attempt to introduce you to them and give you more of an idea of what a summer with YouthWorks looks like. This week… Meet Trevor.

 

 

Where are you from and where do you live now?

I was born and raised in Toledo, OH. It took me 18 years to escape the downtrodden midwestern city to move to the unsurprisingly-less-exciting cornfields of Southern Ohio. Now I find myself admiring the beauty and mystery of Appalachia while temporarily living in Logan, WV.

 

What were your majors and where do you work?

 

I moved to the aforementioned cornfields to attend Cedarville University, from which I recently graduated with degrees in Youth Ministry and Christian Education. Since graduating I’ve had the opportunity to work for New Covenant Fellowship in Logan on a short-term basis before returning to YouthWorks this upcoming summer. New Covenant houses Logan’s YouthWorks site and was my home during the summer of 2013.

 

What leadership/volunteer opportunities do you participate in?

 

In a sense, all my Logan adventures are “volunteer opportunities.” A grant from Real Resources, the parent company of YouthWorks, made it possible to work alongside my friends in Southern West Virginia. Given this technicality, I am not officially church staff. That said, I’ve “volunteered” to assist in material and maintenance projects at New Covenant such as sorting, organizing, and optimizing their Clothes Closet ministry, as well as create a routine “Open Gym” every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for community youth. While we can argue on the semantics of the word “volunteer,” these opportunies, along with many other Appalachian endeavors, require a degree of leadership and the ability to be a self-starter. Additionally, prior to moving to West Virginia, I was an adult leader and occasional teacher at my previous Church’s youth group.

 

Why did you choose to work for YW this summer?

 

I could list many reasons but let me suffice it to say that YouthWorks was where I encountered Jesus as a high school student. I look fondly to those missions trip experiences as watershed moments in my faith. In my prior two years as YouthWorks staff, I’ve gotten to encounter students encountering Jesus–in new ways, in vulnerable ways, in life-changing ways, in frightening ways, and even in “first-time” ways. Being part of that process of spiritual development and empowerment, the same process that so shaped my personal faith, is exciting and invigorating.

 

What are you most looking forward to about being on staff?

 

I look forward to the unknown characters I will cross paths with this summer. As staff, you are flooded with relationships over the summer. Between meeting your own team mates, community members, youth participants, and adult leaders, you are swimming in a sea of new people. And the great part of all these new people is that they are all unique people with whom you’ll have unique, unanticipatable interactions with. Waves of interactions characterize each week. From this past summer I remember the girls of Week 1 who served so well at Kids Club, a boy who went by “Voltron” in week 2, a student in Week 4 who high-fived me every time we passed one another, the love of four square by the groups of Week 5, the dance parties and crowd surfing during Week 7, the T-Shirt selling frenzies of Week 9, and countless more memories with students and staff. None of these memories were planned or programmed or even anticipated but are some of the most memorable people and moments from the summer.

 

What is your favorite song/band?

 

My answer to this questions changes as often and unpredictably as the weather in my little Great Lake hometown (which, to those foreign to the meteorological patterns of Northern Ohio, is often). Currently I’ve been preoccupied with Tenth Avenue North and their single “Worn.” I also enjoy the classic stylings of the Beatles and Billy Joel, the happy-go-lucky rhythm of Relient K, and the stage presence and relatability of Andy Mineo and Lecrae.

 

If you could visit any country other than the USA where would you go?

 

I live in a world of myopia, not only because I am very near-sighted physically, but because my global travels are few! I’ve left this country only once (and it was to the moderately-close Dominican Republic). In short, I’m not sure. An easy default is New Zealand on the basis of Lord of the Rings having been filmed there. Visiting Israel, Greece, Italy and other Mediterranean states/early church locales would also being enticing.