For many students, summer is a time for tanning, friends, and a low-income job.
However, four freshman women have different plans for their holidays.
Kassia Plsek, Julia Dick, Amanda Wiggs and Madeline Cummings have been planning and raising money for their summer mission trip in Chipole, Tanzania.
The four will be in Tanzania May 26 till Aug. 3 to help out the Benedictine Sisters in their orphanage.
Chipole is 12 hours from Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania.
The convent is located at the top of a hill with only the elementary school and orphanage, which are both self-operated by the Benedictine Sisters.
The mission of the Benedictine Sisters of Tanzania is the care and education of orphaned children.
The sisters received teaching degrees a few years ago at BC in order to help them teach the children.
The isters support themselves and their students by sustenance farming.
In addition, they run a small bakery for their students.
According to a letter written by Wiggs, “the women will be helping the sisters with many of their day-to-day activities, giving the sisters an extra hand with everything they do.”
Chores for the four women will include harvesting and selling crops for the sisters.
According to a letter written in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Kansas City, Mo. bulletin, Monsignor Robert S. Gregor said, “They will work with Benedictine Sisters who have a
school and orphanage there.”
The letter continued, “Many of the children became orphans when their parents became ill or died of AIDS.
“These young ladies will work harvesting crops and with the daily chores in the school and orphanage, and will, of course, share in the daily prayers and spiritual life of the Benedictine community.”
These four women will not only be helping the sisters, but will also be living the Benedictine life in order to discern their vocations to the religious life.
“They will be discerning how God might be calling them to service His church,” Gregor said in his letter.
“These ladies, and so many other young people just like them, are the future of the church… They need us… we need them.”
The students will also be conducting a psychology study on gender socialization.
“Since we will have free time and this is a once in a lifetime experience, we want to take advantage of the opportunity as much as possible,” Plsek said. “We are working with some of our professors and the school to establish an official study and acquire the means to make it possible.”
The women hope their research will accepted by a wider academic community.
“If all works out, we will have conducted a descriptive study that could quite possibly be published because of its extraordinary and unique potential,” Plsek said.
However, the women say that the success of the study is not the only goal of the trip.
“We will have benefited the children since we will be able to leave them with toys and basic necessities that we take for granted every day,” Plsek said.
The four started planning their mission trip last November after hearing about another group who had planned to travel to Tanzania in the summer of 2011.
The women have been trying to raise enough funds by sending out letter for donations for the $3,500 trip.
According to a letter written by Plsek, “most of the money is for the plane tickets, which will be fairly expensive considering the fact that it is not very safe to fly through Kenya and Saudi Arabia.
“The rest of the cost is for travel and immunization shots. Any extra money that we raise will go towards helping the community in any way they need.”
In the letters sent out to parishes, family and friends, the women are not only asking for monetary support, but also spiritual support.
“Even if you are unable to help us financially, we would be very grateful if you kept the children, the Benedictine Sisters and the four of us in your prayers,” Plsek said.
The four women will accept donations in any amount.
