Often times, missions trip volunteers never get to see the fruit of their labor. After completing the assigned tasks, many return home uncertain of any future impact.
But, recently, some Alabama Baptists had the opportunity to experience firsthand the results of a missions trip they took as college students when the ministry they helped held a 30-year reunion to thank volunteers over the years.
In 1975, 19 Samford University students traveled to New York City to renovate a run-down storefront into a much-needed ministry center to benefit residents of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
As the first volunteers enlisted to help Graffiti Community Ministries, the group tore out walls, cleaned, installed sheetrock, completed plumbing and wiring work and painted the building.
Earning college credit for the trip, the group had no idea their efforts would help establish a thriving urban ministry.
Reaching thousands
Directed by East Seventh Baptist Church, the center has provided 300,000 hours of after-school time (12,000 hours last year alone); 500,000 meals to the needy; 100,000 suits of emergency clothing; and assistance for 5,000 people directly affected by the 9-11 tragedy, according to a church publication. The congregation has also started eight churches in the area.
“It was very humbling to know that so much could happen from a trip that we saw was very small,” said Dick Bodenhamer, one of the original students who returned to the center as a summer missionary.
“To realize that God had taken what little we could offer and turned it into an incredible ministry through the gifts, contributions and involvement of thousands of other people through the years it is very humbling.”
Now, a marketing strategist for the national Woman’s Missionary Union and member of Vestavia Hills Baptist Church, Birmingham, Bodenhamer said group members who attended the reunion had another chance to aid the ministry by serving bagged lunches in the park.
“We actually prepared the sandwiches in the room that we renovated back then,” he said.
“They use that room every week to prepare these meals. We all remember that room being in major disrepair and the repair work that we did in that facility is still helping the ministry that’s going on today.”
Joe Godfrey, pastor of First Baptist Church, Pleasant Grove, and past president of the Alabama Baptist State Convention, was a design student at Samford when he went on the missions trip.
He recalls the group staying in the New York Metropolitan Baptist Association Building, riding the subway to the work site and helping the organization develop their name.
“When we got there one wall was covered with graffiti,” he said. “We thought about painting the building but knew that they would just write on it again. We wrote the word graffiti up at the top and a bold line. The whole idea was that it became a graffiti board.
“As we left, we pulled up in our van and signed our names on the corner of the building, and other children had already started writing on it,” he said.
Despite its meager beginnings, Godfrey said the center has greatly impacted the city of New York.
“We haven’t done all the work, it’s the people who live there day in and day out and have continued the ministries that are the heroes and the ones that need to be honored and appreciated,” he said.
“But it’s nice to know that something we did for a week that others have carried the torch and have continued to build,” Godfrey said. “Each little thing we do touches so many other people and lives.”
Lynn Smith, a member of Riverchase Baptist Church, Birmingham, was overwhelmed to see the progress that has been made at Graffiti.
“We did not know what we were doing when we went up there, but we just did what we could and those people that came after us nurtured and helped the center to grow into what it is today,” he said. “It was not us. If there had not been anybody after us it would not have grown.”
Esther Burroughs, who lives in Birmingham, was the Samford campus minister who led the group to New York. Now a speaker and writer for women’s groups across the country, she said the trip strengthened their faith.
“Going back there and seeing how many different works that have started all over the city, you came to realize that what you did on faith 30 years ago God has continued to use,” she said calling the trip a life-changing experience. “It was a huge step in my growing and maturing as a woman and as a leader. I learned so much about myself.”
Karon Bowdre, a member of the original group, brought her teenaged son to the reunion to show him “how little things we do for God can have a lasting impact.”
“I think it is important for us to realize that we don’t have to go off to New York or foreign missions fields to do missions work,” she said.
“Right here in Alabama and in Birmingham we have the same opportunity to do urban missions as in New York City.”
Learning faith lessons
A federal district court judge and member of Dawson Memorial Baptist Church, Homewood, Bowdre said, “I owe so much of who I am and what I am to Samford University. This is just one opportunity that I had there to really grow in my faith.”
The group members said this experience has taught them that whatever we do for God does not come back void.
“When we are involved in God’s mission, we are not the one in control,” said Bodenhamer. “All we can do is make ourselves available. He takes what little bit we can do and does wonderful things with it even if we never know the results.”
The experience has also made the former Samford students friends for life.
“We are extremely close and share a common bond,” Smith said. “There has been a gathering since we have been back from the reunion. There is another gathering planned in a couple of months and probably most of the people are planning on attending that.”
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