Uniting Generations to Partner in Guatemala
Thomas Sudbury of Yakima Covenant Church shares about the impact of bringing an intergenerational group from his church on a Merge Ministries trip to Guatemala in August. Uniting around music and soccer allowed the team and local church come together beyond language barriers to see God at work.
Transcript:
Lynette Sanchez: Hello, Pacific Northwest Conference. Um, I'm Lynette Sanchez, your communications assistant, and I'm joined by Thomas Sudbury. He is the pastor of family ministries at Yakima Covenant Church in Yakima, Washington. Hi, Thomas.
Thomas Sudbury: Hi. How's it going today?
Lynette Sanchez: Good. Thanks for being here. We are talking today about a Serve Globally trip your church was part of to Guatemala in August, and you took 12 different people on the trip, including your own family. And so, first of all, we're going to link to the amazing video that you made that highlights all the sights and sounds and stories that your church had. But I'm interested to hear a little bit more about the makeup of your team that went from your church.
Thomas Sudbury: Yeah, it was great. We had started with the invitation. We had invited middle schoolers and people from our community, from our church community. And what was really neat is we asked a couple of families, so that's how it kind of started. We had my family—the Newman family and the Duran family—asked if they could be a part of it. And so it was kind of a cool mix of people. We had people as young as six years old at the time, and adults.
Myself, I brought my four boys and my wife with me. I have a 14-year-old, a 12-year-old, an 8-year-old, and a 7-year-old (he just had his birthday). Very close friends of ours brought their family as well, which includes an adult daughter and a middle schooler, so there were three middle schoolers total. Then another person who recently joined our church came; originally they were going to come as a whole family, but limitations didn't allow it, so the mother and middle school daughter came with us.
Lynette Sanchez: Nice. That's awesome. I love the intergenerational piece—that we're not just sending our youth away to have an experience, but we get to have it with them and bring it back to our churches. So, can you tell me about some key stories that you, a couple of months after the trip, are still thinking about or sharing in your church?
Thomas Sudbury: Yeah, for sure. I think the biggest thing with that whole intergenerational dynamic was we were just so blessed and surprised to see how even our youngest interacted, helped encourage, and were a part of that. One of Merge Ministries' goals is to help encourage the local church at the place we're visiting, and the middle schoolers especially loved our little kids and spent time getting to know them.
We loved just going and playing soccer together and playing music together. One story that stood out on our last day: a truck pulled up to me and my family, and a man named Edwin pulled over and said, "I don't know you, but my son knows you." He wanted to talk because his son remembered and liked me from the school. When we sat and talked with Edwin and his son, we realized we had a lot in common. I grew up in Canada, and he spends a lot of his time in Canada traveling for work. It felt like we were right at home there.
We were also blessed to share music. We have a lot of kids who are really gifted—even my six-year-old plays the ukulele—so we got to go play music with them. Some adults on our team had never played music before, learned that week just enough to stay ahead of the kids we were teaching. And the kids there were astonished that my six-year-old could play the ukulele, which really helped us build relationships.
I remember another night, a church group of middle schoolers and high schoolers came to visit us. We played some games, sang songs, and did some activities together. They asked if they could come back the next day, and then the next day, so they just kept coming back. It gave us a great opportunity to interact, meet people, talk, pray, and encourage them.
Lynette Sanchez: Yeah, that's wonderful. I love hearing about simple things—music, soccer—bringing different cultures and groups together to be united. What has the impact been on your church now that the team has returned? Have you seen any transformation or change from your church body because of this trip?
Thomas Sudbury: Yeah, I think it's been really big. We've felt the need to reach out more to the larger local community because we have a large Hispanic population here in town. It gave people from our church encouragement to say, "Hey, even if we don't know the same language or know it as well, we can still be a community together."
We've been working on things to help bridge those connections. One of those new members' families has been a part of a new ministry we just adopted at our last council meeting called En Familia. It was really neat to see those people come be a part of our trip and then bring that back here to Yakima to help encourage the local church body in similar ways.
Lynette Sanchez: What would you say to other churches thinking about taking the leap and doing an intergenerational Serve Globally trip?
Thomas Sudbury: I think honestly that was the best thing we could have done—going as families. We do a lot of stuff with middle schoolers and high schoolers, but it's hard to get them to go on trips like that because parents can be concerned about them going away. Bringing families together allowed parents to join. I wouldn't send my 12-year-old by himself on a trip like this (maybe my 14-year-old, but not my 12-year-old), but the experience is life-changing, and going as a family made it possible.
The families got closer to each other, but they also grew closer as individual family units. Me being a pastor, I understand doing ministry together as a family, but for some of these families, that might have been the very first time they did ministry together.
Lynette Sanchez: Do you have any quick "God sightings"—things that surprised you and how God showed up during the trip?
Thomas Sudbury: One thing for me personally: I grew up in Canada in a French Acadian community, so I know English and French, but I never learned Spanish. When we went to a church service, my son Noah and I were sitting together, and he asked, "Well, how are we going to go to church when we don't understand the language?"
God really showed up because even though we didn't understand every spoken word, they put the lyrics and words up on the screen. I could read it and whisper to Noah what they were saying. Even though neither of us has ever taken a Spanish class, being there for the week allowed us to experience and worship God in a really cool way.
We also met a missionary who was sharing his story about going to Macedonia, and we happened to run into him in town later for a great connection. Because of this trip, I've become more willing to step out of my comfort zone. Now, back home, we've started singing a handful of songs in both English and Spanish in our church. I don't think I would have been as open to trying that if I hadn't gone on this trip.
Lynette Sanchez: Well, thanks so much, Thomas. I appreciate you sharing the story of both your church and your own life being impacted by the Serve Globally trip. Thank you.
Thomas Sudbury: Well, thank you so much.