A team from Middletown-based United Congregational Church has returned home after a successful mission trip. The twelve-member team, ranging in age from teens to senior citizens, spent a week learning, serving, and community building in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Biloxi is located approximately ninety miles southeast of New Orleans, Louisiana. The UCC team partnered with Back Bay Mission, a nonprofit organization with a mission to strengthen neighborhoods, seek justice, and transform lives. Back Bay Mission operates a variety of ministries serving the poor and marginalized of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and provides mission immersion experiences.
Each morning of the trip, the team learned about the people and needs from Back Bay Mission staff. Then they were given work assignments. While some jobs were skills-based, like repairing and renovating homes, there was a job for everyone. Team members served food in the soup kitchen and assisted in the food pantry. They also worked in the Micah Center, where unsheltered clients from a tent city come for coffee, to shower, and to launder clothes.
At the start of the trip, UCC’s retiring Interim Minister Jonathan Morgan encouraged team members to take the time to get to know the people. Grounded in UCC’s fundamental tenet of loving their neighbor, Reverend Morgan suggested that mission trips aren’t about the tasks at hand but about forming genuine connections that foster growth and transformation.
This simple suggestion led to an impactful experience for team member Kelli Kidd. While painting and repairing a local couple’s home, the owner, an older Black gentleman, shared his story: from the tragic, racially motivated murder of his father in the 1970s and the death threats he received when he purchased his home in a predominantly white neighborhood in the mid-1980s, to rescuing those very neighbors with his boat during Hurricane Katrina’s eighteen-foot floodwaters in 2005. “Hearing everything they had been through,” Kidd said, “gave me a new level of true appreciation for their welcoming hospitality, their kindness and love.”
“Each of the clients has their unique story and circumstances as to why they’re at Back Bay Mission,” said Maggie Fagan, another member of the mission team. “It’s time to put compassion into action.”
The week, with a heat index of 107 degrees, wasn’t all work for the team though. They worshipped at a local southern Baptist church, took a day trip to New Orleans, and gathered each evening to reflect on the day. They discovered that, while they set out to serve, they were deeply enriched in return. Kidd described the experience as giving her, “a sense of warmth and comfort and contentment … a feeling of full fulfillment.”
While the twelve team members brought their time and talents to Biloxi, the entire congregation actively participated in the trip. In the months leading to it, church members raised funds to address critical needs in Biloxi and to subsidize the cost of the trip. They hosted an informational dinner, to learn about Biloxi and to enjoy a traditional southern-style boiled shrimp dinner. A Zoom call mid-way through the mission trip ensured everyone remained informed and included. And now, the church is already planning another trip next year and discussing new ways to put faith into action locally.
About United Congregational Church: The United Congregational Church, located at 524 Valley Road in Middletown, RI, is a Christ-centered, inclusive community dedicated to embodying and reflecting the love of Christ through worship, small group ministry, service, and faith in action. They are a member of the Rhode Island Association of the Southern New England Conference United Church of Christ. All are welcome. Learn more at www.uccmiddletown.org or ucc1695@aol.com.
Source: United Congregational Church
