Now that our 8 weeks of service in Ypsilanti has come to an end, it is time to process what we have all learned this summer and figure out exactly what God wants us to take away from this experience. For me, it has been a summer of tremendous growth in many different aspects of my spiritual life. My openness, trust, peace, comfort, faith, hope, and love have all grown as a result of the service I’ve done this summer. In the last few days that I was in Michigan, God gave me such a strong thought-provoking idea during an hour of adoration. I believe that this idea truly captures the message He was trying to convey to me about this summer. This idea began by reading a sentence out of a book that I had picked up to read. The sentence immediately made a powerful impact on my heart. It said: “It is the people that are poor in worldly terms that are truly the blessed indeed, for they rejoice and exalt in their sufferings.” I just kept repeating it over and over to myself. I realized that this is how a lot of the people that we had been serving live their lives. They are extremely poor in worldly terms, and they go through a great deal of suffering. Yet, several of them live their lives in exaltation of the Lord, despite the horrible conditions they live in. They view and cherish their life as a gift from God. If they can have so little, yet allow their hearts to belong fully and completely to God, then we should be able to do the same. From my experience I have found a whole new meaning in serving the poor. It’s not just a call to serve the poor anymore; it’s a call to become like the poor in spirit as well. We all have a lesson to learn from the poor, because the truth is God wants only our hearts. He doesn’t want our things, or our accomplishments and successes, or our talents. He simply wants all of our love, focus, and attention to be on Him. Thus, the poor have served me in a way I could have never imagined.
In Him,
Desirae Wieseler, Catholic Urban Project Missionary 2011
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