Though many college students spend their spring breaks at home or on vacation, Christendom College students and staff chose a different path this year — traveling abroad to “restore all things in Christ” by serving the poor and evangelizing in the Dominican Republic and Honduras this past month.
Over the past 25 years, more than a thousand Christendom students have traveled abroad over spring break to serve the poor by evangelizing, building homes, and completing countless other projects for them. Students have gone on missions to the Dominican Republic, Malta, Peru, Colorado, the Bronx, Mexico, and other places.
This year, twenty-two Christendom students and three staff members went on mission to the Dominican Republic in partnership with the Diocese of Arlington and served at their mission in Banica, continuing the work of founding faculty member Dr. Raymond O’Herron, who started the annual trip. Students assisted local workers in demolishing a damaged chapel and began construction of a new one, as well as helping clean up roadside garbage.
Sophomore Bruno Koatly, who went to the Dominican Republic, was grateful that his first mission trip gave him the opportunity to bond with fellow students while serving others in a meaningful way.
“One is rewarded with a sense of having done something worthwhile that will be beneficial to the community we visited,” says Koatly, adding, “It also is a practical implementation of ‘restoring all things in Christ’ since the mission trips have an emphasis on spreading the faith through evangelization or example.”
As in previous years, the college again sent a group to serve in Honduras alongside the Missioners of Christ. The group spent the week living with locals, evangelizing through house visits, and organizing programs of prayer and adoration.
Sophomore Perpetua Phelps, reflecting on her second mission trip, highlighted how the mission trips aligned perfectly with the Lenten season.
“A Christendom student should go on a mission trip because it is a radical way to encounter Christ in the desert,” says Phelps.
These spring break trips follow a January mission to Mexico, where students and staff built houses for families in need, exemplifying Christendom’s mission to ‘restore all things in Christ’ through service.
Christendom’s Spring Break mission trips provide students with a variety of opportunities to perform spiritual and corporal works of mercy during the Lenten season, helping them grow while they assist others. Christendom exists to educate the lay apostolate and “restore all things in Christ,” with the spring break mission trips serving as a natural extension of that mission.
Contributed by Bridget Palm ’28.